We took a delivery yesterday-a big one. It’s our new car! “Wait”, you say, “I thought you were taking off on your boat. Why the heck are you buying a car??!!” Well, it’s not exactly a car in the traditional sense.

What we got yesterday was our tender. For us, the tender functions as our car. No. Really. If you think about your car and how you use it, you’ll see what I mean. For better or worse, cars are how we “do stuff”. We use them to get to and from work, get groceries, pick up friends from the airport, go to the park, go out to dinner, etc. Well, when one lives on a boat, a tender serves the same purpose. There are a lot of places we can’t take Meraviglia. The water may be too shallow or it may be too small an area for a large boat. Or, it may be too expensive to get a dock at the marina. Our tender allows us to go places it would be impractical or impossible for Meraviglia to reach.

The tender is a 10-foot long RHIB. That stands for “rigid-hulled inflatable boat”. The hull is aluminum and is surrounded by inflatable tubes that provide stability. RHIBs are the favorite choice for tenders: they are lightweight (ours weighs 148 lbs.), sturdy, stable (don’t tip over easily), plane easily with an outboard (faster with less fuel consumption), and are easy to repair if the tubes develop a leak. We paired that with a Suzuki 20 hp four-stroke outboard motor. Our options were 10, 15, or 20 hp. We then discovered that those three motors are absolutely identical except for the fuel injectors. They are the same size and weight. So we decided to go fast-we got the 20.

Special Delivery!
The launch of the launch.

The outboard stores on a bracket on our stern railing. We have an outboard hoist there that we use to raise and lower it. The dinghy will live in one of three places. For short trips, we may tow it behind Meraviglia. For longer passages, we’ll store it upside down and strapped down on the foredeck. When we are at anchor, she’ll live “on the hip”. That means suspended in the air against the side of the boat. Theft is a significant problem in some places, so keeping her there reduces the chances she goes missing.

“On the hip”
Our outboard hoist

So far, so good. We took her out for a quick spin yesterday and she reached a speed of 18 knots, so we think she’ll get us where we want to go pretty quickly.

Now we need a name. Hmmm…..