It’s a tender subject, but inflation can be a good thing

The dark red sloop, about 90 feet long and flaunting an ultrasleek superyacht look under a skyscraping five-spreader rig, powered past Hassel Island, rounded smartly into the breeze and dropped its anchor off Waterfront Drive in Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas, Virgin Islands. No sooner was the anchor secure than the hinged transom, powered by hydraulic rams, opened to reveal a garagelike space from which the crew produced a matched pair of 20-foot RIBs (rigid inflatable boats), dazzling white with big silver outboard motors. The boats streamed aft on their painters like elegant show dogs on leashes. It was nice to see a yachtsman taking pride in his tenders.

The garage is a new wrinkle, one obviously limited to boats of a certain size, but carrying a tender as a permanent fixture is an old yachting practice, albeit one that has been obsolete for years. There was time when most boats of cruising size installed a dinghy on deck. I recall a photo of the legendary Olin Stephens design, the 38-foot yawl Finisterre, three-time winner of the Bermuda Race, racing with an overturned dinghy on the coachhouse.

As a youth, I sailed in races on a boat carrying a tender that very way. Frankly, I thought it was absurd to block the view forward with the rear end of a dinghy, not to mention putting up with the additional weight and windage. On the bright side, it broke the spray for the cockpit crew, which consisted of just about everybody on board in those days before rail-riding became a racing imperative.

Today, superyachts may have full-time tenders, but ordinary sailboats carry one only when it’s needed for cruising. You can call it a dinghy, but except that it floats, it has nothing in common with those permanently installed dinghies of yore. Inflation may be anathema to the economy, but to sailing it’s been a godsend.The inflatable dinghy has become virtually universal for boat-to-shore transportation for good reason. Inflatables are more stable and seaworthy, able to carry more weight, are lighter and easier to stow (when deflated, of course), faster with the powerful outboards they can carry and cheaper than rigid dinghies. In fact, they’re superior in every way except two—rowability and aesthetics, which are related.

Basically, you don’t want to row an inflatable. Not only are they too wide for a smooth rowing stroke and too easily blown around by a strong breeze, but the hulls stick to the water rather than glide.

Rowing ability is what shaped the graceful tenders of the past. Form and function went hand in hand; the prettiest boats were the easiest to row. Outboards weren’t used or needed. With a good pair of spruce oars, perhaps with gently curved spoon blades, getting there was one of the joys of tender ownership. Some of the dinghies were the works of famous yacht designers and included sailing rigs for tooling around the harbor. I’ve preserved a mental image of one I once admired bobbing at the side of a moored ocean racer, clinker built and bright finished, its pretty lines accentuated by the bright white, canvass covered cushion that wound around the gunwale.

No one should bother to preserve images of inflatables. Unless you’re talking about that superyacht’s glamorous show dogs, they’re strictly utilitarian. It’s their practicality, not their bulbous form, that is pretty. Even that is not perfect, though. What to do with an inflated inflatable when the big boat is on the move can be vexing. Removing the outboard and manhandling the inflatable aboard fails the fun test. The alternative, towing, is easier but problematic. Pulling a sticky inflatable subtracts speed and adds time to passages. Bad weather can make it a sea anchor. The painter is a disaster waiting to happen when the towing boat backs under power.

A boat worker from Bequia in the Windward Islands told me about a fellow who chartered a powerboat from his employer. When maneuvering to pick up a mooring buoy, he backed aggressively, heedless of the dinghy painter. The line wrapped in the prop with such violence that the boat’s diesel engine was pulled from its mounts. “When they were through with him in the office,” my informant said, “his credit card was smokin’.”

A friend of mine got so tired of towing an inflatable that he bought a small fiberglass rowing and sailing dinghy and hung it from davits he installed on the stern of his Islander 36. If you don’t mind a pair of mini cranes on your boat, it’s a good solution, but of course with a hard-hulled dinghy you’re missing the stability, volume and forgiving softness of an inflatable.

Davits do, however, open possibilities for a best-of-both-worlds solution. With davits, small yachts can carry rigid inflatable boats, now available in dinghy sizes. These fiberglass boats embraced by air tubes handle beautifully and have all the attributes of inflatables, except the ability to deflate into a compact, stowable size. I’ve sailed a Privilege 48 catamaran and a Bavaria 48 monohull equipped with RIBs in davits, and I can tell you it’s the way to go for cruising.

RIBs are too heavy to handle without davits, but for a few yachtsmen there’s another way. I watched the crew of a Swan 70, a boat with a racing pedigree and lines and distinctive Herman Frers transom that were way too gorgeous to clutter with davits, lift a RIB from the water to the foredeck effortlessly with a halyard on a husky electric winch. I realize this is SAILING’s small boat issue, but there are some things to be said for big boats.

In the Caribbean, inflatables of all types are as ubiquitous as rum. Down in that cruising mecca, in the swanky Crown Bay Marina at St. Thomas, I observed a use for conventional soft-bottom inflatables that I will now add to their long list of attributes: They make terrific fenders.

I stopped to watch a 50-foot sailboat backing slowly out of its slip, figuring that with the easterly trade wind blowing hard on its beam, something interesting was likely to happen. Sure enough, the wind took control, the boat bounced off a couple of pilings and began crabbing toward its next obstacle, a Beneteau 47.7 in a nearby slip. A quick thinker, the Beneteau’s owner grabbed the inflatable dinghy resting on foredeck and with a discus thrower’s whirling motion threw it over the lifelines. It came to rest against the topsides just in time to cushion the broadside from the out-of-control neighbor.

Don’t knock inflation.