Dinghy/Backup Outboad Arrives
26 June 2012
The outboard dinghy motor I purchased for my first cruising sailboat dinghy (the Zodiac Zoom) was a 2hp Honda. It was easy to move around, loud, slow, but pretty reliable. Tropical Dreamer came with a 3 hp Mercury. I stored the Honda in the motor home and used the 3hp as the dinghy motor for the entire cruise down the ICW and back and forth to the Bahamas. It was also light, powerful for its size, and mostly reliable. It got sold along with the Catalina 36. When I tried to start the Honda 2HP after returning to Tucson, it wouldn't. Must have sat for too long and gummed up the jets or something. The time and expense to have it repaired were too much, considering I didn't own any sailboats at that time, so I sold it on Craigslist. That left me without a dinghy and without a dinghy motor, which was fine, until recently. The new dinghy outboard is a Tohatsu 6 hp short shaft. One may wonder why, now that I have downsized the sailboat, I doubled the engine size. The answer is that it is a lot more fun, and safer too I suppose, to have a strong and reliable dinghy outboard engine. According to the box and materials, Tohatsu is Japanese. It is the same engine as Mercury and Nissan, with a less marketed label. This one is big enough to replace the 10 hp attached to the stern of the sailboat if that one dies while on a cruise. But mostly it is because I wanted to be able to go fast on the Saturn dinghy. The tank that came with it holds 3.1 gallons and will run the engine for many hours without refilling. My only worry is that seems bigger in person than I thought and, at 57 pounds, it's going to be hard to get it into and out of the locker and onto and off of the dinghy, especially without the benefit of a step-down transom, like on the 36. But, I'd rather have a dinghy engine that is a bit too big than one that is too small. To put things into perspective, the preferred dinghy engine for cruisers is the 15 hp two stroke Yamaha. That engine is three times as powerful as mine. I'm hoping to have this long enough for Celia to learn how to drive the dinghy by herself one day.
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