Ship of Theseus.

When we purchased Cyclops, she came with an RIB dinghy we named Giggle Monster after an elementary school classmate of Ellen’s. The kid’s first name was Cindy, and her teacher called her Giggle Monster. (Ellen can’t remember her last name, so if you know…)

Anyway, that’s what we named the dinghy. At that point, she had a 2005 AB fiberglass hull RIB with a 2005 Mercury 15 hp outboard. We swapped the Mercury for the Yamaha and ran her like that for the past three years.

I patched the holes in her transom, painted the transom, repaired the oar-holders, and used 5200 to adhere tie down brackets for the fuel tank. In this configuration she was reliable and sturdy, but heavy.

This is me in Giggle Monster in NY just after Matt and I resolved the water-in-the-fuel problem and I went for a test drive.

This winter we replaced the AB hull with a 2021 aluminum hull Highfield and I’ve been getting her just right. New fuel filter/water separator installed. And the Highfield comes with really smart velcro to hold the fuel line off the floor and out of the way. There’s also a nice gas tank platform in the bow where we can strap the tank. This configuration is probably around 20 lbs lighter than before.

I hoisted the full rig (loaded with lead shot in the bow to simulate a full tank of gas and the dinghy anchor/rode) to make sure our hoisting harness lifted her evenly. She’s perfectly level…ready for the start of the season. (The season, incidentally, feels very far off today because even though it is late March, in Maine March is just another month of February.)

It’s a little tough to see the harness in these pictures, but Iast year I spliced up a Dyneema harness and used a beefy clew ring from a big-boat genoa as the lifting ring. The block and tackle I used to raise Giggle Monster in the air is the old preventer from Cupcake.