Zen Zero
Well-Known Member
Prelude:
The bottom fell out of my 20ish year old AX2 last year whilst I was rowing my 80 year old mum out to look at some sea caves near Sivota (which some charts call Mourtos) in Epirus. Mum skipped daintily back onto the swim platform while son nobly went down with his ship. A charming young Pakistani whose boat repair skills I would recommend to anyone, glued it back in, but was not able to repair the co-owner's opinion of the AX2 with its inflatable sole and thus the said dinghy was brought back to Rome at the end of the co-owner's last road-trip. An even older (at least the bottom doesn't fall out) Italian inflatable with a plywood sole was chucked into the back of our van by the co-owner just before my wife and I set off for our 2 weeks in Greece. I shall call this new old dinghy "scollapasta", which is Italian for spaghetti strainer. It has 3 tubes and the front one doesn't stay up! 2 weeks is too short to be messing about with glue and patches and the co-owner's got the whole summer to fiddle with it, so I blew it up one last time, chucked the pump into an locker on the boat and set off on a shakedown tour of the Corfu Sea with scollapasta skipping along behind us. It was OK going upwind at 5kt, and didn't seem to mind having a flaccid bow tube. It even got some appreciative comments in Benitses (it was even mankier than the one that somebody had nicked from the owner of the neighbouring boat some time before). At Petriti, while her ladyship caught up on her sleep, I decided to get some rowing practice in, I fell out with the outboard a couple of years ago and we haven't spoken since, and besides I don't like having petrol on-board, and discovered I had brought the wrong oars, and paddling with one oar whilst trying not to knock the other one over the side is rather tiresome. However I did manage to get ashore, buy some bread and breakfast bakery, have a coffee, discover the result of the Germany Brazil match and paddle back again, all the time thinking "now if this thing had a sail ... ".
Coming back to the mainland with an 18kt northerly, a following sea and a nervous her-ladyship, Scollapasta filled up with water twice. The first time because I'd forgotten to take the bung-hole plug out again after my row, and the second time because we were doing 7kt down 1.5m waves that were overtaking us. Stopping the boat and flinging the sodden deflated object onto the foredeck with her ladyship thinking we were going to be shipwrecked , lashing it down, and lashing down a genoa sheet by mistake (to be discovered later) was not my favourite sailing experience of the year... !
Anyway ...
Getting to the Point:
- "If only this thing had a sail..."
- I don't like outboards or petrol on a yacht.
- I wish I had a tender with an easily steppable mast that could carry 2 fatties, some baggage/shopping/a 20l jerrycan of water, be rowed, towed, beaten up in a Greek harbourlet, lashed to the foredeck of a 8 1/2 meter boat, or the roof of an old van.
Question:
Does anybody here actually have and use a thing like what I wish for ... ?
The bottom fell out of my 20ish year old AX2 last year whilst I was rowing my 80 year old mum out to look at some sea caves near Sivota (which some charts call Mourtos) in Epirus. Mum skipped daintily back onto the swim platform while son nobly went down with his ship. A charming young Pakistani whose boat repair skills I would recommend to anyone, glued it back in, but was not able to repair the co-owner's opinion of the AX2 with its inflatable sole and thus the said dinghy was brought back to Rome at the end of the co-owner's last road-trip. An even older (at least the bottom doesn't fall out) Italian inflatable with a plywood sole was chucked into the back of our van by the co-owner just before my wife and I set off for our 2 weeks in Greece. I shall call this new old dinghy "scollapasta", which is Italian for spaghetti strainer. It has 3 tubes and the front one doesn't stay up! 2 weeks is too short to be messing about with glue and patches and the co-owner's got the whole summer to fiddle with it, so I blew it up one last time, chucked the pump into an locker on the boat and set off on a shakedown tour of the Corfu Sea with scollapasta skipping along behind us. It was OK going upwind at 5kt, and didn't seem to mind having a flaccid bow tube. It even got some appreciative comments in Benitses (it was even mankier than the one that somebody had nicked from the owner of the neighbouring boat some time before). At Petriti, while her ladyship caught up on her sleep, I decided to get some rowing practice in, I fell out with the outboard a couple of years ago and we haven't spoken since, and besides I don't like having petrol on-board, and discovered I had brought the wrong oars, and paddling with one oar whilst trying not to knock the other one over the side is rather tiresome. However I did manage to get ashore, buy some bread and breakfast bakery, have a coffee, discover the result of the Germany Brazil match and paddle back again, all the time thinking "now if this thing had a sail ... ".
Coming back to the mainland with an 18kt northerly, a following sea and a nervous her-ladyship, Scollapasta filled up with water twice. The first time because I'd forgotten to take the bung-hole plug out again after my row, and the second time because we were doing 7kt down 1.5m waves that were overtaking us. Stopping the boat and flinging the sodden deflated object onto the foredeck with her ladyship thinking we were going to be shipwrecked , lashing it down, and lashing down a genoa sheet by mistake (to be discovered later) was not my favourite sailing experience of the year... !
Anyway ...
Getting to the Point:
- "If only this thing had a sail..."
- I don't like outboards or petrol on a yacht.
- I wish I had a tender with an easily steppable mast that could carry 2 fatties, some baggage/shopping/a 20l jerrycan of water, be rowed, towed, beaten up in a Greek harbourlet, lashed to the foredeck of a 8 1/2 meter boat, or the roof of an old van.
Question:
Does anybody here actually have and use a thing like what I wish for ... ?
