How fast is your dinghy ?

[CAPTAIN FANTASTIC]

The Bic 245 is quite a light dinghy (being polyethylene) and flat bottomed, in flat waters it should plane easily with 3.5hp. But in a chop or at speed it is likely to be wet as it has little freeboard. I find the same with inflatables, they throw up a lot of spray in anything but a glassy calm so speed takes second place to comfort - I hate arriving at the boat already soaked through!

Rob.

I have a newish Seago inflatable 2.6 which I do not use often because the tubes are of a smaller diameter than my 2.9 Waveline which I use all the time, it makes a difference between staying dry or getting soaked.

 

[Spyro]

260 seago and 3.5 2 stroke with my 13 stones onboard will plane at 12 knots. You need a hard transom to get an inflatable planing.

 

[Boo2]

If you are worried about speed, because you have a mooring a fair way from where you launch, you might do well to look for a longer dinghy, but still as light as you can find.
If the distance is not so great, speed doesn't matter much unless you have a lot of tide to argue with.

Yes, it's the tide I have to worry about. I'm going to be at Langstone this year and most of the slips seem to be in the main channel at the narrowest point. Tides may be up to 5+ kt so I'm a bit worried about how I can get to the boat at all states of tide. I think the spit on the E side (N of Eastney) looks the least tide-ridden for my mooring but then there is the security aspect and the faff of getting gear and/or myself to and from the car park. The harbour regs say tenders must be < 3.0m (no leeway on that either) so that limits the size of dinghy I can use.

Thanks to all for the replies,

Boo2