Scott wrote:

Hi Annie,

I have been wondering about the JRA Dinghy design. The couple of sketches in the other forum look very interesting. I am not sure if it is reasonable to expect weeks, months or years before seeing details. Is it possible that this could be the dinghy on the deck of your new offshore cruising boat?

Scott.

I was recently in contact with John.  He has had some health issues over the winter, which have slowed him down.  However, he tells me he has started building the JRA dinghy: he always likes to make a prototype before selling the plans.  The design is actually rather large than I would choose to handle- being just over 5ft tall, makes manhandling (should that be personhandling? womanhandling?) a dinghy something of an issue.  My current one is as long as I am (also a John Welsford design) and I adore it, but have to admit that she's really too small for ferrying other people to and from the shore.  I have enough on my plate at the moment, without building another dinghy.  There are several people after the new JRA dinghy, as I keep reminding John.  I want to ccarry my dinghy in davits, but she is much shorter than the width between them so I shall have to Make a Plan around it.

I have posted on my blog again, for anyone interested.

David wrote:

Just wondering: is there still room for the dinghy on deck, in between or over the vent and deck light? It will be happy in the davits, most of the time, but I liked to put it on deck for ocean passages.

I think if I were to put a dinghy on deck, I'd probably put it over the sidedeck, rather than over the camber centrally.  I'm not putting chocks on just yet: I adore my present 5ft dinghy, but may decide to go for John W's 6ft version in due course just to make it easier to bring visitors from ashore.  There would be room forward, to starboard and possibly aft, for that matter.

Thank you, David, for having the faith in me to think I might take my boat offshore :-)

Thank you for that, Tony.

I have not a lot to show for the past three weeks since I blogged.  I can blame it on visitors, but my own snail-like pace would probably be more accurate. Anyway, for those who want to see the latest, here it is.

David Thatcher wrote: If a picture is worth a thousand words then a well shot video is worth a thousand pictures. 

Annie Hill wrote:

Funny you should say that, Len.  I thought it was a very odd idea to take a video of something as static as a boat in build, but each to his own.  I suppose you can pause it if you want to look at something a bit longer?  I'm not sure what the video shows that I haven't put on my blog?