Ditch the outboard kicker?

[Burton]

Slow Motion (an A25 FC) came with a typical retractable outboard bracket, and so I hung our long shaft Evinrude on it as “insurance”.

In pictures of other Albins, I see very few outboards on the transoms. Our tender is an 8 foot Avon RIB, but its a pig to tow. And so for longer journeys, I’m thinking of a hard shell dinghy like the Eastport pram with Weaver davits or something like that. And that would require that the outboard and bracket go goodbye.

We’ve only had this boat going for a few years, and it’s still in somewhat of the project stage. I would really appreciate the opinions of more experienced owners. Oh – our power is a low time Yanmar 3JH3E.

Thanks!

[tribologist]

I would personally never consider a kicker. Lots of trawlers that would have much more issues if they started to drift has single engines and no kicker. A drift anchor and a good regular anchor is all I carry and I'm not overly worried over an engine issue. We have a Mercury 240 hypalon inflatable that we hang in Harbormen marines sling. Very happy with that system but we don't use the dinghy much. I think there are images in a previous thread.

[tribologist]

viewtopic.php?f=28&t=11726&p=77151&hilit=sling#p77151

[Burton]

Thank you! The web davits system is brilliant.

In sailing for years we always had a kicker… hard to break old habits.

[tribologist]

https://youtu.be/vRhvrzSfj0w
https://youtu.be/KFQjqWZNmyA

Had these videos from the first time we used it.

[trbeau]

I have a 21' Bruce Roberts diesel trawler and have never considered a kicker because i have an inflatable Avon with 3hp motor I tow when traveling. When I tie up the Avon to the side of the big boat I can travel at 4 knots and steer with the rudder on the big boat. It takes a minute to tweak the outboard to the right angle and away we go. Only downside would be fairly frequent refueling of little Yamaha. The Roberts has an extremely reliable Vetus 33 hp motor. It's a marinized Mitsubishi industrial diesel that hasn't missed a beat in over 10 years. I notice a slight decrease in fuel mileage (.75 gph rises to 1.0 gph) when towing. Otherwise don't know it's back there until approaching a dock.