Life is an adventure, and so, it turns out, is the addition of a dingy to our list of toys. The addition of a cover was an obvious choice, but supporting the center to make the water drain off was not trivial.
The Admiral came up with a brilliant idea by putting a 4 foot diameter beach ball in the dingy. The ball supports the cover and drains most of the water off the sides. Other trials were not so successful. We tried lifting the dingy vertically using pulleys and long 2x4 lumber to simulate davits mounted on the fly bridge. This worked okay, but the limited mechanical advantage made this option undesirable... Another idea was to keep the dingy on a floating dingy dock when at our home marina.
The basics of the floating dock are two 24x48x12 inch high polyethylene floats mounted under a 4ft by 8ft deck. The dock worked "okay" although if was a little "tippy". Ultimately, we abandoned further development work on the floating dock partly because the marina had recently banned such docks (even though they neglected to tell us...).
The Admiral came up with a brilliant idea by putting a 4 foot diameter beach ball in the dingy. The ball supports the cover and drains most of the water off the sides. Other trials were not so successful. We tried lifting the dingy vertically using pulleys and long 2x4 lumber to simulate davits mounted on the fly bridge. This worked okay, but the limited mechanical advantage made this option undesirable... Another idea was to keep the dingy on a floating dingy dock when at our home marina.
The basics of the floating dock are two 24x48x12 inch high polyethylene floats mounted under a 4ft by 8ft deck. The dock worked "okay" although if was a little "tippy". Ultimately, we abandoned further development work on the floating dock partly because the marina had recently banned such docks (even though they neglected to tell us...).
