The Dreadnought

Ok so something that's been bothering us is the decision whether to take a small tinnie with us to be our tender. The arguments for:

• Useful to ferry  people and equipment over shallow water to get from boats to shore and vica verca
• Useful to get up shallow rivers to do a bit of estuary fishing
• Can be man-handled over obstacles like rock bars in rivers to get to remote fishing spots
• Can be used as a survival boat, say, if something goes horribly wrong with one of the big boats.

The arguments against:

• Towing it will chew a lot more fuel
• Not sure I'm keen of going up estuaries in a flimsy roof topper given that a big croc could treat it like entree.
• I wonder if the tinnie would just fill up with water and sink if we hit rough weather with it in tow, thus becoming a risk in itself
• If something went badly wrong (say, really rough weather,  capsizing etc) causing the loss of a big boat, I can't imagine the tinnie would survive the same event anyway.
• Having it in tow will be a mighty pain in the arse if we are trolling, or doing anything that requires reversing (eg, setting the anchor). Not impossible, but annoying.

Ok, so therein lies the quandary. Some of these problems can be managed, so we've decided to prep a tinnie for the job, give it a few trial runs and make a decision from there. If it doesn't work out we'll just sell it.

So meet "The Dreadnought". 

Nat and Daz picked up this clapped out 3.1m tinnie for $1200 off Facebook classifieds. The hull is pretty old and hasn't seen much love. It had some leaky cracks where the hull joins onto the transom and someone had drilled a hole in the seam at the bow to make a tow hole. Sadly all they did was put a leaky hole in the bow. That said, it's got a pretty new 6hp 4 stroke Suzuki that starts first pull,  foam under the seats for buoyancy and the owner threw in his fish finder with the deal.

The renovator's dream

Bit of an acid wash and a clean up and she's looking pretty

Ready to test launch

well she floats....but she's a bit leaky...

We've spent a day with Sam at Performance Plate Boats welding and making attachments for it to get it the way we want, including:

• Welding up the cracks and holes, 
• Adding carry handles, 
• Adding a tough towing lug on the bow, 
• Adding 4 X rod holders, 
• Adding some lugs on the transom for a transducer,
• Adding a removable torsion bar access the bow so Nat  can sow a canvas nose cone to it. This will hopefully deflect some of the water when towing it in the rough stuff.

the 4 lugs on the transom are to mount the transducer and other random

New handles on the front and the removable torsion bar for the nose cone. We've also built a platform in the front so the bilge pump battery has a place to sit.

Rod holders, handles, and removable torsion bar for the nose cone.

Since then Nat has sewed up a nose cone out of an old windsurfer sail. It's a bit rough and if it passes sea trial #1 Daph will have a job to toughen up the sewing with her industrial sewing machine.

 

• Daz has fitted a battery in the bow and wired in a bilge pump with a float switch in the stern so if it takes on water it'll spit it back out.
• Daz and Bruce have made a harness to winch it onto the roof of Bruce's truck.
• Daz and Bruce have made a towing harness out of cable and Nat has spliced rope loops for where the harness attaches to the big boat (the rope is so we can cut it loose if it sinks while still attached to the big boat and becomes a sea anchor/ safety risk).

Here's the results so far:

So this weekend it's sea trial #1 day. We'll be launching Skull Drag'n' and The Dreadnought and testing out how the towing situation works, making some mods and generally seeing if it's going to be more trouble than it's worth. Moreton bay is predicted to be a bit sloppy, which will prove a worthy test. So let's see what happens.