Weighing a dinghy on bathroom scales

finestgreen said:
Amazing that nobody suggested the obvious practical solution of getting swallows to lift the dinghy and multiplying the number of birds required by their maximum carrying capacity..
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Only if they were African swallows & currently they have moved south. Some have been waiting to come back to the UK, but there is a shortage of rubber dinghies available for channel crossings.
 
That's a good thought, except the Osprey is over 17ft long. Even if I could (I really can't) lever it up to stand it on the transom, it'd be all the weight on one set of bathroom scales, and it'd be substantially over the scales' maximum. Weighing the burden on all three points of contact brings the load into a measurable zone. I hope!

EDIT: When I said I don't have a trailer, I meant I couldn't tow the boat to a weigh-bridge. I do have a launching trolley, whose points of contact with the ground I would use.
 
dancrane said:
That's a good thought, except the Osprey is over 17ft long. Even if I could (I really can't) lever it up to stand it on the transom, it'd be all the weight on one set of bathroom scales, and it'd be substantially over the scales' maximum. Weighing the burden on all three points of contact brings the load into a measurable zone. I hope!

EDIT: When I said I don't have a trailer, I meant I couldn't tow the boat to a weigh-bridge. I do have a launching trolley, whose points of contact with the ground I would use.
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Put it on the roof of the car :rolleyes: (y)
 
dancrane said:
Thanks Daydream. Hopefully I'll see you at the weighbridge, with your Squib on the top of your car. :)
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I have a road trailer plus a launching trolley for my Squib. If you read PBO mag you would see my article on an easy way to make a launching/road trolley for a 20 ft boat.
Our club has the scales & a dedicated gantry for raising the Squibs. So I would have no trouble weighing my "down to weight" Squib. It is all part of being a club member for the past 60 years. I enjoy the camaraderie & found that I actually gain something from it.- Like a set of dinghy scales even ;)

However, back to boats on cars. I seem to recall Uffa Fox would put his Jolly boat or his Flying 15 on his car top, when going to open meetings. A Jolly boat is 18 ft.
 
That's a bit nuts. Terrible weight too - the FF is a third of a tonne, I think. By the time one rounded up enough hands to put it on the roof and arranged injury insurance, it would be easier to buy a trailer. I've been surprised in recent years by how few dinghies larger than around 11ft (Topper, Europe, etc) are car-topped. Maybe the members at my club all have bad backs. Don't think so, though.

My club (my 11th year) is all dinghies and cats, some of them very keenly raced at home and elsewhere. But nobody ever mentioned the desirability of 'dinghy-scales' on site. I daresay the difficulty of handling a Squib ashore without a hoist or gantry (or winch at the slipway) accounts for your easy access to the weighing kit that can be combined with it. I don't think such dedicated equipment is very commonplace - I never heard of it before.

I just Googled "dinghy scales" and the only obvious result on the first page was from 2012! The fellow was proposing to use bathroom scales. :ROFLMAO: Great minds. ;)

Weighing a Hull? - OK Dinghy
 
dancrane said:
That's a bit nuts. Terrible weight too - the FF is a third of a tonne, I think. By the time one rounded up enough hands to put it on the roof and arranged injury insurance, it would be easier to buy a trailer. I've been surprised in recent years by how few dinghies larger than around 11ft (Topper, Europe, etc) are car-topped. Maybe the members at my club all have bad backs. Don't think so, though.

My club (my 11th year) is all dinghies and cats, some of them very keenly raced at home and elsewhere. But nobody ever mentioned the desirability of 'dinghy-scales' on site. I daresay the difficulty of handling a Squib ashore without a hoist or gantry (or winch at the slipway) accounts for your easy access to the weighing kit that can be combined with it. I don't think such dedicated equipment is very commonplace - I never heard of it before.

I just Googled "dinghy scales" and the only obvious result on the first page was from 2012! The fellow was proposing to use bathroom scales. :ROFLMAO: Great minds. ;)

Weighing a Hull? - OK Dinghy
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Burnham on Crouch has a Squib fleet & I expect one can find the kit there. When I was in Ireland I was invited to a club where they dry sail the Squibs, so they put them in & out in a few minutes
I am told that Uffa put the FF Cowslip on the roof of his Humber Snipe & the keel behind the front seats
 
You lot do make things complicated - just measure sea level, put the boat in the sea, measure again. Now you know the displacement - simple!
 
That would work. ?

Thinking about it, I have often put the boat on her gunwale to work on the masthead. Only a short edge of the gunwale makes contact with the ground, so it wouldn't be hard to put the scales under the gunwale as the boat is rolled onto her side...and finding a balance-point where minimal upward or downward pressure at the masthead is necessary to keep her steady, her weight would presumably be shown accurately at the scales.

Same old limited capacity of my domestic scales, though.
 
Dan, no need for a 56 post thread.
Only launching trolley, one scale, two bricks or chocks the same height, and a mason level just to check the level each time in two directions , abeam and fore/aft.

And the level could be overkill.
 
dunedin said:
Why do you need to know the weight?
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Purely curiosity. I lately saw a (reputedly) competitive Osprey for sale, that gave its weight around 160KG. That surprised me, as it doesn't sound like a characteristic the seller would have chosen to advertise...

...but I wondered just how strictly racers in the class observe their boats' (and their own) weight, and how much it is deemed to make a difference.

The design began with a three-man hiking crew, so I suppose Mr Proctor foresaw 440lbs (200KG) or more on the gunwale...for that reason, I've never been worried if my modifications added a stone or three, because as a singlehander with no atom of interest in racing, I'm still far lighter than any racing Osp.

In fact photos of me sailing often show about 18" of the bow above the waterline, so perhaps I need more weight - or I just need to trapeze from well forward in the cockpit. Might lengthen the waterline and give an extra quarter-knot. Knot that it matters. :)
 
ylop said:
This method works:
Weighing a Boat on the Trailer
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Thank you, I found that, when I Googled the subject earlier.

In spite of suggestions that every good club should boast the kit to weigh its boats, I get the feeling this is a subject that is only infrequently explored, and probably rarely mastered except with precision equipment at high-level events.

I may get down to the club tomorrow...I'll report my results if I can summon the energy to manoeuvre the boat onto the scales. ;)
 
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