The dinghy is large heavy and unwieldy, and we had no place to put it except the floor of the cabin. We wanted to put it on deck. Turned out the most efficient use of space was to move the liferaft cradle aft, just forward of the dodger, then install steel tubing for the dinghy in front of that. The hardest part of the whole project was gaining access to the underside of the holes, inside the cabin. It was a pain in the ass to remove all the necessary ceiling panels, pull out the foam, cut out squares in plywood where necessary, and in one spot even relocating some wiring to make space for the bolts to come through. For every hole we cored out the deck, filled with a plug of thickened epoxy, and redrilled the holes down through the center. When we put it all together we used lifecaulk as our sealant. Jonny built the new dinghy cradle out of 316 stainless tubing and fittings (a shout out to Marcus, a marina friend, for helping source the expensive stainless). The result looks really sharp and is completely bombproof. We found a location for all of the mounts that doesn’t foul the running rigging (which all runs directly under both the liferaft and the dinghy). We made the dinghy cradle wide and long enough so that it was easy use simple webbing cam straps to hold it down.
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