[NN10Steve]

My wife and I bought our nesting dinghy for several reasons. Most of them are the same reasons that many cruising sailors choose hard shell dinghies over inflatables; durability, rowing pleasure and sailing performance, so that an outboard is not the only choice for propulsion. Also for ease of towing, when appropriate.

The nesting ability adds a couple of more attractive features to the list: the security of on deck stowage with a minimal footprint and blockage of visibility forward and the ease of deploying and recovering the smaller and lighter individual sections compared to a one piece dinghy. The sections can be joined in the water. The designer of our dinghy has even been known to row just the stern section to shore on occasion, to avoid the time needed to deploy and join the sections.

An interesting additional note is that the doubled mating bulkheads at the sectional join can actually increase the strength and rigidity of the boat compared with a one piece design which is essentially open inside with a simple thwart seat. Nestaway Boats in the UK uses this fact to build a 14 ft long 3 section nester which has a slightly shorter and narrower footprint than our 2 section 10 ft long dinghy.

There are several nesting dinghy designs available in plan and kit form for home builders but as far as I am aware at this time, Nestaway and NestingLite are the only two offering production nesting dinghies. Other forum members may correct me on that.