Ding, Ding Dinghy

Well another job is checked off. When we bought "Windless" now know as Fryedaze, she had the dinghy on the aft deck but was fitted with Weaver Davits that allow the tender to be hung off the swim platform. We never used this option, in fact Dave spent a great deal of effort extending the boom and putting an electric winch on the boom to make it easier to launch from the aft deck. Well with the impending loop trip the Weaver Davits looked like a more convenient way to launch and carry the dinghy, just not as pretty (PRETTY Counts in my book). The pads that are glued to the dinghy have come loose over the years and were in need of replacement. We purchased new pads and work through installing them. With this new system the boat name is obscured by the dinghy. The previous owner had the boat name on the bottom of the dinghy to address this. Soooo, we ordered a set of stickers to put the name on the bottom of the dinghy. As you can see from the pictures below my spacial relationships is a bit off and the name in enormous, OH WELL!

Purchase day 2010 and the location of the dinghy on the aft deck.

Old Weaver Davit pad location The black areas are where the pads were no longer attached.

Old pads, new replacements were purchased.

Pad area cleaned and prepared with MEK (nasty stuff)

Mockup with the old pads to ensure good contact with the weight on them. That weight is a section of a PRR railroad track compliments of Ray Fasick my father in law.

 Pads glued up and in place. We researched a lot on the glue up of these pads. Lots of horror stories on failure during installation. The manufacturer stresses the need to have low humidity and no direct sun light. We ran a dehumidifier for four days in the garage to get the humidity down to <45% before installing the pads. Fingers crossed, we think it worked.The glue has a 6 day complete cure time so we will wait a week before testing it out.

Here is an example of how it will hang on the swim platform.

Sooooo, the dinghy will cover the name on the boat transom. We are required to display the boat name by regulations. We ordered boat lettering to put on the bottom of the dinghy. Bets took my recommendation for letter size and made the order. It looks like it was a bit of over kill. HEY, but bigger is better ....right

Due to the four stroke engine requirements that do not allow the engine to be laid or tilted to the carb side, we had to add a rotating transom mount that will keep the engine upright with this new rig. It would not have been needed if we would have stuck with the old 3.3 HP 2 stroke Merc that came with the boat. But what the heck.... I didn't want to mix oil and gas and wanted more power with the 6 HP.


Preps for the trip are winding down. The biggest job for Dave is to buff and wax the topside of the boat. Bets is busy finalizing the provisioning of the boat and stowing the things we won't need until later in the trip. We cant wait to shove off!!!!!