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James Johnson wrote:

I have an Avon Redcrest inflatable. A portaboat has some attraction but on my
26 footer there is no acceptable place to put it.

The cabin top? On my boat the cabin top isn't big enough, an the link to some
pictures showed one stowed on the cabin top but it also obstructed the
handrails, which I won't do for safety reasons. I might need to be able to grab
that handrail one day.

I looked at our bag with the seats, and it IS secured to the handrail
on one side with bungee cords.

Two points here.
1) We don't go out on the cabin top or foredeck when underway hardly
ever because we have everything led back to the cockpit on purpose so
we don't have to.
2) We always wear auto inflate life vests with harnesses when
underway, and if the water is at all rough we are attached by a tether
to the jacklines. So we don't rely on the handrails any more than we
rely on the lifelines.

The lifelines? If I put it there it fouls the sheet leading the jib track and
also would be an unacceptable obstruction to going forward on the side decks.
YMMV, and larger boats would not have the same issues.

Our jib track and sheets are outside the lifelines (which is one
reason the boat doesn't point as well as we can't bring the jib sheet
inside the shrouds) and the lifelines are on top of a toe rail. The
portabote can be either on the deck inside the toe rail, or actually
up on the lifelines.


Set up time for my Avon:
5 minutes to pull stowage bag out of cockpit locker, unzip bag, unroll dinghy
(it has a hard rollup floor with interlocking slats)
5 minutes to hook up pump and inflate
5 minutes to insert engine mount, mount engine (lightweight 4 hp 2 stroke), and
throw in safety bag (contains flares, lines, battery nav lights, anchor, life
jackets, handheld vhf)

This is a total of about 15 minutes. Figure another 5 minutes to load people
and cargo. It is a small handy inflatable. Of course a Redcrest can't plane,
but if you have that much need for speed why do you have a sailboat? My boat
has a draft of 2 1/2 feet with the centerboard up so I can anchor in pretty
close to where I want to go.

We have a 5 foot draft and anchoring close to where we want to go (or
to other people) isn't a priority. That's because everybody else
wants to anchor close and we don't want to anchor close to other
people. I don't understand why whenever someone anchors, everyone
else comes in an gets right next to them even when there's lots of
space that's just as good that isn't close to anyone. It's just as
inexplicable as why people consistently come into a dock and just as
they are turning into the slip suddenly discover that they will need
lines - which they don't have rigged and they have to go diving into
lockers to get.

grandma Rosalie