Dinghy davit for SO 469

[virtualburton]

Hi guys, at long last I take possession of my 469 tomorrow!

It currently has an AB Lammina 9.5 AL dinghy which is kept on the fore deck. I want to have it more readily accessible and would like to install a davit. I have read through as much as I could on the site and thanks to Moonshadow’s post I looked through Kato‘s website and see they make davits for the 469.

I thought I would ask for anyone’s experience with davits on a 469? I have read that some say to extend them to make them higher - I am very tall so wondering if I should do this?

As always, any advice is appreciated.

Thanks everyone

[moonshadow]

I think a little higher is better. I found that the webbing used to attach stern of dinghy was longer than needed so I made a shorter one. Now the transom can be let down while dinghy is up on Davits.
Also the Kato folks at the boat show told me that I can put a piece of “Star Board” between the lower end of the davit and the boat when installing the Davits, effectively raising the aft end of the Davits.
And, at night the dinghy blocks the white stern nav light which isn’t good and also reflects too much light into the cockpit. Kato makes a mount to relocate the stern light.
Since my boat came to me with these Davits I am only familiar with the one brand. I bet others work well also but I haven’t looked.
Good luck.

[rxc]

I don't have any experience with a 469, but I do have a Kato arch, and it is wonderful. I had davits on a previous boat (Catalina 34), and while they worked, the dinghy (same one) never seemed to be as stable on the davits as it is on the arch. And, if you think that you might ever do serious offshore sailing or voyaging, the arch is a wonderful place to mount all the stuff you will want or need.

[neworca1]

I no longer own our 469, but last year I added Garhauer davits with some custom bracing (also by Garhauer) that worked out quite well. The original configuration had bracing bars from the stern pulpit down low on the transom. These did nothing since the angle was all wrong. (The "No" symbol marks the port-side one...don't even bother fitting this.) The key to a solid installation was the U-shaped braces I installed at the top of the transom (blue arrows here). A spacer (from Garhauer) was placed at the bottom of the davit's vertical leg, sized to bring the davit leg in contact with both the U-brace and the pulpit. I used a stainless steel fitting to attach the leg to the U-brace, and simply lashed the leg to the pulpit with dynema. The one shortcoming of this installation was that I should have ordered longer legs; the ones shown here were lengthened by welding additionl tubing at the bottom (with a length of smaller tubing fitted inside. This had too much flex for my liking, although it seemed to be strong enough. Also, if I were doing it again I'd put the bottom of the leg (red arrow) even lower on the transom, since there is a slight bit of flex in the FRP panel. I led each line forward through a low friction fairlead to a block attached to the stern rail cleat (via a soft shackle), then back up to the primary winch, making it very easy to raise our AB aluminum RIB and 20HP outboard with one finger :-)

[sailingabe41ds]

Hi

I know it is a different boat but I too bought my davits from Garhauer.  The quality and service was great and they too had to make a 4"custom extension at no additional charge.  The price was half of what the eastern coast competitor wanted.

Abe

[virtualburton]

Great info, thanks guys. I’ll check out Garhauer too.

cheers, David