Plastic Dinghy

A Plastic Dinghy is an alternative to wooden dinghies, which tend to break more often and require far more maintenance. These types are usually made out of fibreglass, GRP or FRP, which are all materials derived from plastic.

A lot of modern boats are made out of plastic, because it is light and it damages less easily. Also if it is damaged, it is less severe than it would be on a wooden boat, because you just need to fill it up with more fibreglass, whilst on a wooden sailboat, you would need to remove a whole part of the wood and replace it (likely to cost a lot of money!).

Apart from being cheaper to maintain, they can also be faster and better looking than the wooden boats. Although they don't have a glossy look that makes wooden boats look so sexy, plastic boats can look very nice indeed, just because of their modern feel and stylish design.

Plastic can be moulded into practically any shape, whilst with wood, you are pretty much stuck with long straight planks with slightly curved edges.

This makes it able to have a very interesting design and could look better, faster and have a higher performance than the wooden dinghies.

I quite like these types of boats and in some cases such as the GP14, the boat can be manufactured in either wood or plastic. However newer classes are almost exclusively made out of plastic and it is unlikely that you will find a new class made out of wood.