Dawncraft Dandy River Cruiser

[Sadjers]

I want to build a trailer for my 19ft Dawncraft Dandy. However, I do not know the weight. Can anyone tell me how heavy a Dawncraft Dandy is? It has typical fittings and a Honda 10HP engine.

[sddsddean]

If its in the water, its easy to work out. From memory a Dandy is 16' long and 6' 10" wide, which is equivalent to 4.9m x 2.1m = 10.29 m^2. Measure your actual draught (I think the Dandy is more or less flat bottomed [had a friend who had one called HowNow, because it was brown and handled like a cow in a cross wind!]) so just take an average front and back. Lets say its about 300mm (0.3m), multiply the above figure by this and you get 10.29 x .3 = 3.08 m^3 and as Water has a density of 1000kg/m^3, your Dandy displaces just over 3 tonnes, so that is near enough its weight. Just check the actual draught to get the right figure.

[Panic Button]

I got the HowNow bit, but the rest went straight over

[Sadjers]

I like the HowNow tale too.
I tried that calcualtion once while sat on a narrow boat. It seemed to work and I got 16 tonne. However for a 45ft narrow boat, the variables such as the bow and stern shape are less significant. For the Bovine like Dandy these are very signficant. I have found a website who spec'd the Dandy at 500Kg + Engine + 20% for the water in the GRP. (I guess GRP must absorb water). This adds up to somewhere around 750Kg.
I prefer 750Kg to 3000Kg but is right?

[sddsddean]

I know our old Fairline Family (20') was about 3/4 ton empty, so say a ton loaded and with engine. It is a similar size to the Dandy, so perhaps if you allowed for a design weight of 1.5 tonne, you should have allowed for all fittings and gear etc and have a bit of a factor of safety as well. The 3000kg was only an example. Sorry if it gave you a shock!!