The yacht tender, explained

Short answer. A tender is not a small boat with a nicer name, it is a working piece of yacht equipment with three jobs: get the people ashore, carry the gear that does not fit in a suitcase, and do both without damaging the mothership or itself on the way up. Length is the last thing that should decide which tender you buy, not the first.

01 · The lift decides before you do

Every yacht davit or crane has a certified lift capacity, and that number is fixed by the yacht, not by the tender you would like to own. A tender that is a perfect fit on paper is disqualified in one phone call if it is fifty pounds over what the davit is rated for. This is the first call to make, before looking at a single model, and it is why we publish the ADB 420's weight as provisional until it is confirmed on a scale as specified: a number that is wrong by even a little is worse than no number at all when a lift capacity is on the line.

02 · Deck space is the real constraint

After lift capacity, the second wall is the footprint available on the swim platform or the foredeck chocks. A tender that fits the crane can still be the wrong shape for the space it has to sit in when not in the water. This is why we describe tender compatibility as depending on "available deck or platform dimensions and the yacht's certified tender-lift capacity," and decline to publish a rule of thumb by tender length. A rule like that would be wrong often enough to be useless.

03 · Why length is the wrong first question

Buyers ask "what size tender do I need" when the honest first questions are: how many people go ashore at once, how much gear travels with them, what is the certified lift capacity, and what is the available deck footprint. Length is just the number that falls out once those four are answered. A 4.2 meter RIB that clears the davit and carries four people and the cooler is the right tender. A 4.6 meter RIB that looks more capable on a spec sheet but exceeds the lift rating is not a bigger tender, it is not a tender for that yacht at all.