A Yacht Tender is Born....

Cruisers around the world all have one thing in common. They all have a yacht tender, dinghy, dory or rowboat depending on what name you prefer. I tend to stick with yacht tender most of the time. If the boat is your home, I consider the tender to be the family car so to speak. The boat manufacturers know this and like to charge crazy sums of money to purchase one. Doesn't matter if it's inflatable or hard side. Just to drive the point across, they would have you believe that a 12 foot Avon inflatable, 20 horsepower engine with a bimini complete with his and her matching cupholders is required to have a good time. That will be about $5,000 thank you and we DO take visa. As my 2.5 readers know that's more money than I spent on buying BeBop, the trailer and trip to Georgia to get her. Nope can't afford it. I decided before I even had BeBop to build my own.

I'd like you all to meet BeBop's little companion. It's a "Apple Pie" class yacht tender designed by Chuck Merrell. (chuck@boatdesign.com) www.boatdesign.com You can download the plans for free from his website to print out. What he provided was a pretty basic interior so I decided to make some major modifications to include better seats and positive flotation. In keeping with the musical theme for naming my boats I've decided to call her "Notes."

She's nearly ready for her 2nd test floating. Here is the latest picture.


Specs:

7 feet 1 inch loa
3 feet 6 inch beam
50 pounds in weight
3 flotation chambers
150 pounds of positive buoyancy (ie she ain't sinkin')
30 pound thrust electric trolling motor
5 1/2 foot oars (renewable energy) ^_^
Cute as a button

I am extremely proud of this little dory. I basically built her out of 3 sheets of marine grade plywood, 2 gallons of fiberglass resin and fiberglass cloth. I've repaired a lot of stuff in my life, restored etc but I've never taken a bunch of plywood and turned it into a boat before. Every piece of wood on Notes is 100% custom measured and fabricated. Just for the record, fabrication is very difficult but you get a incredible sense of accomplishment from it. Nothing was store bought except for the trolling motor and hardware. I still have about 3 days worth of bonding and sanding to do before she's ready for the final float test and then paint. Figure about 7 days, 40 hours more of labor. Total Cost minus trolling motor and oars is about $350 bucks. Big savings over that cookie cutter Avon and it's one of a kind too.

I want to put together a longer "this is how I did it" guide at some point in the future but for now, I wanted to show everybody what I work on when the weather isn't so great and I can't really do much with BeBop. Now you know about my dory, Notes. I plan on painting them both the same way so they will match, the white with green trim. I figure it will be so cute it will be sick! lol!!

For now to get a idea of scale this is a picture of me in her. (In front of BeBop)


Very tiny eh?!! She has to be to fit on deck. Sometimes the locals will slash up a inflatable boat if they are mean, jealous etc so I decided early on to have a hard dink over a inflatable, but it would need to be *very* small for the boat sizes I was looking at. Now at this point I know you thinking it's too small but James Baldwin of the "Atom" built a similar model that was actually 6 inches shorter!! (Of course you know this from reading my links ^_^) Sorry James, mine is defiantly cooler even if you do get the smaller dory award.

Well it's about bedtime, my neck due to various reasons really hurts right now so I'm signing off til next time. Perhaps if the weather is better next weekend we'll get to BeBop Facelift Part II. Until then....Fair Winds...