The other day, I was informed that the hip dinghy that will be the new standard is the OC 330. Of course, being enamored of cool dinghies, I searched out Offshore Cruising Tenders and found a sorta/kinda dinghy that really did not impress me. My first impression was that it’s a RIB meets plywood stitch & glue mash-up. Like most mash-ups it seemed to exhibit more of the worst of the types rather than the best.
That being the case, I was not overly impressed. Being the sort of guy whose first reaction to designs is going into how I’d build the sucker for less, the design as it stands makes that pretty easy as it could all be stitch & glued with minimal torture involvement. The downside is that it would be somewhat heavier.
Which brings us to the weight issue. I’m a big backer of the idea that dinghies should be light which goes back to my kayak building days when carbon and Kevlar were the medium to achieve Mithral-like structure and performance. The big question is still going to be…
At what cost?
The OC is certainly better than a RIB (a RIB being the rock solid example of a bad dinghy design) as well as being lighter than a stitch and glue design but is it really worth $11K?
My next dinghy, while only being seven foot (my available deck space) and using a measly two-sheets of plywood is going to cost a couple of hundred bucks and will include some carbon where it makes sense. Saving me somewhere around $10,800 which will make me all kinds of happy.
Having rowed hundreds of miles on a variety of dinghies, the very first thing I look at in a dinghy design is how well it will row and did the designer include a sensible rowing geometry or is rowing just an after thought? One look at the OC tends to support the after thought answer.
What I’d like to do, some time when I have the time and inclination, is to build an ultralight, tough as nails, nine-foot dinghy and life-raft capable for $500 or less. Hopefully, once done I’ll find someone with an OC270 and race them for pink slips.
You might say I’ve a cunning plan…
A fool is easily parted with their money……. Im in the wrong buisness.