A lot of boats up here tow their dinghies. Some of them at a pretty good clip, 12-15 knots. Most of the dinghies or shoreboats I see being towed have their motors mounted on them (if they are powered). The motors are almost always tilted up. The nice thing about towing a dinghy is it's already in the water when you need it, either for regular use or an emergency. The length of the towline/bridle is important because there are positions relative to the boat's wake and the waves that cause the dinghy to tow with more stability than other positions. I've been told what these positions are but I don't remember them--- they're easy enough to find out, though. We would tow a dinghy (in our waters) before we would carry it on the boat other than suspended horizontally on stern davits or vertically on the swimstep on Weaver or SeaWise davits. We don't believe in carrying the primary dinghy on an aft cabin top or a boat deck where it has to be launched with a mast and boom or crane, powered or manual. Other than having to shorten the towline or alter to a side-tie when maneuvering into harbors, marinas, and into slips or docks, towing seems to be a pretty trouble-free method of taking the shoreboat along. All the people we know who do it, including a number of sailboaters, say that once you figure out the routine, it's no big deal at all. Easy for me to say--- we've never tried it. However when the day comes that we are able to take longer trips up north we will swap our swimstep-mounted Livingston hardshell dinghy with its swivel-mounted motor for a towed Bullfrog and mounted motor. We don't believe in inflatables for a variety of reasons, so we will always have a harsdshell dinghy, either a "conventional" hardshell like we have now or a non-inflatable inflatable like the Bullfrog (it uses solid foam half-tubes instead of air-filled round tubes). So if what we have observed and learned from a lot of people who tow their shoreboat, I would not anticipate you will have any problems once you climb up the learning curve. You probably wouldn't want to do this in the open ocean but for relatively protected waters like the PNW and (I assume) the ICW it should work fine. One thing to determine--- I see a lot of horror stories on this forum about being seriously waked while running the ICW. I don't know how a towed dinghy would react to a nasty wake coming at it from the side. It's a pretty rare problem up here so I've never heard anyone express concern about it. ______________________________ C. Marin Faure GB36-403 (grp) "La Perouse" Bellingham, Washington