Dinghy McDingface has a new look

In 2016, back in New Zealand, we replaced Maunie's old and leaking dinghy with a brand new one - a French-made Zodiac. This was about the time of the Boaty McBoatface story (where the British Antarctic Survey rashly and hilariously decided to let the British Public vote for a name for its new exploration vessel that subsequently became the Sir David Attenborough), so Maunie's new boat became Dinghy McDingface, or DMD for short.

The original story of the launch can be found here

Though the boat worked really well we soon began to realise that its build quality wasn't great and the PVC tubes began to degrade quite alarmingly in the fierce Pacific sunshine. Not quite as alarmingly as the storage cover, though, which seemed to dissolve before our eyes under the glare of UV light, so a complaint to Zodiac resulted in their sending us a replacement which we then covered with Sunbrella acrylic to make it last.

Making a new cover for the cover in Australia

By the end of last year the boat was no longer useable, leaking both water and air and with the safety barrier between the two air chambers leaking as well. Clearly it was time for a change but our dilemma was that the hard-hull, folding-transom design was just perfect for Maunie's foredeck and, having gone to all the effort of making the cover, it would be a waste, not to mention an environmental disaster, to throw it all away.

Thankfully there's a brilliant business near Dartmouth called Tilley Inflatables which specialises in re-tubing and repairing inflatables. Mike Tilley has taken the business on from his father and he had a good look at the boat, made a few "mmm, looks tricky" noises but agreed that the old tubes were beyond repair and he could replace them in Hypalon - a much higher quality material far more resistant to UV than PVC. It wasn't a cheap option - costing more than a brand new Zodiac - but we decided to go for the re-build. It gave us the option to move to a more, ahem, eye-catching colour scheme and Mike did some great work to re-position the lifting handles which, in the original design, were stupidly placed right where the tubes folded so were coming unstuck. We also cleaned up the design, to remove unnecessary extra handles and fittings, and the old tubes could be sent to be recycled.

Yesterday Graham collected it and launched at Darthaven.

A sneaky reveal as it's unpacked 

No chance of not spotting that on a crowded pontoon!

New look, vs the original, shown below on its launch day:

The dusty cover needs a bit of a clean but DMD is now reunited with the mothership

We are really pleased with how it's worked and it's great to know that we have given the boat a new (and hopefully long) life.