How to Choose a Tender

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Tenders may just be the Rodney Dangerfields of the yachting world. They’re expected to start and run flawlessly on a moment’s notice and perform myriad tasks during a given trip — everything from ferrying passengers and gear to pulling kids on a wakeboard. And once someone owns a tender, he or she gives it the bare minimum of maintenance and care.

Disrespect notwithstanding, yachtsmen make more than their fair share of blunders when choosing a tender. Errors run the gamut from the wrong size vessel to improper propulsion to poor gear to material mistakes. We talked to the experts to ensure you’re better equipped when selecting your next tender — whether you respect the little boat or not is up to you. Here’s what we found.

Measuring Up:
The first mistake people often make when choosing a tender is being lazy about taking measurements. They often don’t measure the space available on their boat or the height of the opening if the boat is to be stored in an enclosed area. Other dimensions should also be considered.

“It’s a much more technical sale than people expect,” said Skip Reisert, owner of Tender Care Boats in Fort Lauderdale, Florida (www.tendercareboats.com). “Someone tells a yacht owner he can fit a 13- foot tender on his boat, but it becomes 14½ feet as soon as he puts up the tilt on the outboard.”

Reisert and other dealers say that tender buyers often come in with the wrong size or even the incorrect brand in mind. It’s often recommended that a yacht owner have the company that installed the davits or hydraulic swim platform come to the boat to recommend a size for the tender.

While a tender might fit dimensionally, don’t forget about the possibility that it can restrict boarding access. If a boat with a beam of 14 feet has a transom door at about the 12-foot mark, having a 12-foot tender blocks that entryway.

You Get What You Pay For:
If failing to measure is the first mistake people make during tender selection, being cheap or going too small is definitely the second. In many cases, the tender is one of the last decisions a person makes. Sometimes an owner doesn’t want to spend any more money, and other times he doesn’t want to have to make any more decisions, so he just takes the cheapest thing he comes across.

“There’s almost sticker shock when people see how much these boats cost,” said Jarrett Bryzek of International Yacht Network (www.iynboats.com).