Nesting Dinghies
Designs by Kaufman Design, Inc., Danny Greene, and Charles M. Strayer
Commentary by Mike O'Brien
onsider a tender's design criteria: The boat must
be small, yet it will be called upon to carry huge
loads; it should row easily, but it will be wide
relative to its meager length in order to gain capacity;
in the interest of easy handling, it ought not weigh too
much, yet we know it will suffer terrible abuse. No
doubt about it, drawing a proper dinghy can be an
exercise in contradiction.
The three dinghies shown here address the prob-
lems of stowage, performance, and capacity by split-
ting apart amidships. The resulting pieces will nest
neatly on the deck of a cruising boat or in a shoreside
storage shed. The smallest of the trio, Danny Greene's
10-foot 4-inch Chameleon, folds into a 5-foot 3-inch
package that lives on the forward deck of his 34-foot
ketch. After bisection, Mike Kaufman's and Charles
Strayer's longer (about 16-foot) boats can be nested —
or they can sail off as separate, more or less equal, 8-
foot halves.
Kaufman describes the advantages of the type while
explaining the reasoning behind his J.P. Downs
Memorial Bifurcating Dinghy (hereafter, the JPDMBD):
"No one," he says, "gets stranded at a mooring while
the dinghy is ashore, heavy loads can be carried, and
argumentative siblings can be sent off — in different
directions."
Strayer's design allows "break-apart" racing: The
boats could sail the outward leg as separate 8-foot
dinghies, join together at the windward mark, and run
home as 16-foot schooners. Or the process might be
reversed — that is, the boats could head out in their
long configuration and sail for the finish as 8-footers.
Given the latter format, I suspect that volunteers for
the race committee might be difficult to find.
All of the designs shown here specify plywood con-
struction for stiffness, light weight, and ease of build-
ing and upkeep. They all have pram bows in order to
make the best use of space and to provide adequate
buoyancy forward. But, whatever similarities in con-
cept these three (five?) boats might share, they are quite
different from one another in shape and detail.
Chameleon's V-bottom, with considerable twist and
deadrise in its forward sections, shows the influence
of the British Mirror Dinghy (an early stitch-and-glue
design). The flat-bottomed JPDMBD has dory-like sec-
tions, and Strayer's Longsplice displays a multi-chine
hull.
Danny Greene might lay claim to being the dean of
nesting-dinghy designers. By his count, more than a
thousand boats have been built to the 10 break-apart
designs that have come from his drawing board. He
describes Chameleon as "my best all around...by far."
Construction is dirt simple: Cut out plywood panels for
sides and bottom, and join them with temporary butt
blocks (where they will be separated later). Lace the
hull together with monofilament fishing line. Insert
the "matingbulkheads." After the "inside joints" have
been filleted with epoxy and fiberglass, and the rails
and quarter knees have been installed, the boat can be
separated into its forward and after halves. You should
understand that, although the hull goes together
quickly, considerable detail work is required for a two-
piece dinghy. The designer, who built the prototype
for his own use, estimates construction time at 100
hours for the rowing version, with an additional 40
hours required to complete the sailing rig and
appendages.
Two Yz-inch stainless-steel bolts located at the upper
outboard corners of the mating bulkheads and an inter-
locking latch at the daggerboard trunk hold Chameleon
together when she's in the water. The boat can be
assembled while afloat. |
