Welcome back Melissa!

I have a SS sheathed wire cable, but rarely ever use it. Only a few times have I locked up the dink on a bareboat, to the transom overnight. The cable can clunk around all night, in sportier conditions. I have used mine on the rarest occasion in New England, but only at relatively abandon dinghy docks in bigger cities.

I'm very sorry to hear this. It's all of our biggest concern. 5 years is simply not enough. Hope the issues are manageable.

I keep telling myself that I can be happy just hopping around New England in good weather windows, when the longer distance cruising days are over. I'd prefer to be that exception that can stay out longer.

If someone wants your dink and it isn't on davits or aboard, then they will take it in just a few seconds with a set of bolt cutters, SS chain or not! I've found a better option is rigging wire (1X19), which is much harder to cut quickly (if at all) with bolt cutters. It is bulky and a pain, but it will do the job.
But most of the dinghy theft down here is for the motor, not the dinghy. Quite often the dink is found motorless rather quickly. If the whole thing goes missing, I'd be checking the outbound sailing boats, not the locals, and that's where having some prominent form of ID on the dink will be theft prevention.
However, I'm fairly convinced that a goodly number of the dinghies reported stolen were poorly tied to the boat and not stolen at all, especially among those who close the pub night after night.
I think, as painful as it might be to believe, there is a lot more boater on boater theft than local on boater than most suspect.

This is a great discussion and I am glad to see that Melrna is back!

I’m pretty sure there is hardened chain that is nearly impossible to cut with bolt cutters. Bet most chain is easily cut, however. I understand that cable is harder to cut, because it tends to spread out and distribute the force. That’s what we use. I still think the determined can get through it. However, slowing them down or making it difficult is generally all it takes, especially if they’re messing around, with you sleeping aboard.

Security chain is formed so that cutters dont get an easy bite...is too much bite for them. The rockwell is greater than the cutters
Cable needs special shears to be cut cleanly

We have been using our ssb for that for a long time. Just had to renew my 10yr ham license. And it works almost everywhere if you can find a station. in the Carib we had no trouble and when we crossed we used a couple of stations in Canada and one in Fla all the way to Horta except for the last day. We downloaded twice a day. When we did the Black Sea we had a 3 day from Russia to Odessa and had a major front coming at us so we again downloaded twice a day just in case the front came in early and we had run and hide. We used stations in Germany and Switzerland (yea be beat it by 18 hours - it came in with 50+ winds) - When we leave Egypt we will use it for a Med crossing as we head north.

The question is if we cross back this year will we get a sat phone in Gib or just rely on our ssb. we'll see. As a winlink operator we love it but sometimes finding a station on our long distance is an issue but can be overcome with work and patience - love our ssb

There is one thing we do - we record the next 5-7 days in a notebook-- we record wind, wind direction and pressure - we then watch to see if there are changes and prepare according - does 5-7 out really mean anything - well I would not take it to Vegas but it is an indication but what is important are the changes over time and by recording we can see if we got something coming and how we can avoid it

I never realized they had this feature. Just went to their site to see how it worked. Pretty cool. Thanks.

On related note, I find the WeatherTracker app on my iphone/ipad to be fairly low bandwidth and able to download a file with the most marginal cell or wifi coverage. The kind of coverage that won't allow full webpages to download.

Chuck wrote:

That’s why I like Weathetrack application among other reasons. Personally I like to watch the TREND the weather is following. Is it getting consistently stronger, weaker? With windfinder the tribe are saved until you ditch them. Then I can go back and see what the forecast was a cullenif days ago.

It also has this “metro tram” function where when you pick a point it gives you a 10 day run of all parameters for that point. Including CAPE and wave height. It is missing wave period, which I get from bouy weather. Bouy weather now has 2 models. GDS and LOLA, but I’ve no idea what that is. It generally shows significantly more wind and wave than GFS. I find it is shows, rough average, slightly more wind than we actually get. But the GFS wave forecast is more realistic. If all I looked at was Bouyweather LOLA I would never go out!