The ideal dinghy

AN ACQUAINTANCE of mine has moved up to a bigger, newer boat. He sold his tender with his last boat, so he’s looking for a new dinghy. Naturally, he came to me for advice. The big choice, I told him, is between an inflatable and a hard dinghy.

Here are some pros and cons for inflatables:

Pro:

They’re compact when you deflate them.

They’re fast even with small outboard motors.

One of their best attributes is that it’s easy for swimmers to climb (or launch themselves) aboard.

For their size, they can carry heavy loads.

Because they are just big fenders, they won’t damage your topsides.

Con:

Barnacles on the rocks will puncture them.

A screwdriver in the back pocket of your jeans will puncture them. (Don’t ask. It still hurts.)

They are mostly pretty wet and bouncy under power.

It takes time to inflate or deflate them.

They’re fairly expensive.

They don’t stand up well to everyday hard work in tropical climates.

They are very attractive to thieves.

Here are the pros and cons for hard dinghies:

Pros:

They’re better sea boats.

They’re much easier to row — and even sail, if you want.

They’re more durable.

They tow better behind your boat, with less drag.

They’re better able to withstand abrasion.

Cons:

They’re less stable than inflatables.

They’re heavier and bulkier.

They need more stowage space on deck or on stern davits.

On a 27-foot boat like my friend’s, there is simply no space on deck for a hard dinghy. He doesn’t have a roller furling jib, so he needs the foredeck space.

L. Francis Herreshoff listed his requirements for a hard dinghy as follows:

► It should row easily, light or loaded

► It should be light enough to be hoisted aboard easily

► It should be constructed strongly so it will not leak, and take some abuse

► It should tow steadily, always holding back on its painter and never yawing around.

I’m not sure it’s possible to find a dinghy like that, especially one that will always hold back and never yaw around. But it might pay to keep looking. Miracles do happen, they tell me.

Today’s Thought

For she IS such a smart little craft,

Such a neat little sweet little craft —

Such a bright little,

Slight little, Light little,

Trim little, slim little craft!

— W.S. Gilbert, Ruddigore

Tailpiece

“Let’s stop here. This looks like an ideal place for a picnic.”

“It must be. Fifty million mosquitoes can’t be wrong.”

(Every Monday, Wednesday, Friday — a new Mainly about Boats column.)

Crossing oceans in dinghies

ONCE AGAIN someone has complained that my book, Twenty Small Sailboats to Take You Anywhere, is not helpful. “How can you advocate sailing across an ocean in a Cal 20, for example?” my critic wants to know.

Well, as a matter of fact, every one of the boats in that book has sailed across an ocean, and Cal 20s have done it more than once. Even dinghies, much smaller than anything in my book, have crossed oceans. I wrote about this once before, but it doesn’t seem to have stuck. It was a long time ago; maybe some new blood has come along that was too young to read back then. So, once again, let me spell it out for you.

It’s quite obvious that dinghies and their ilk can’t meet all the qualities necessary to claim seaworthiness for larger vessels, ones that can accommodate people in the shelter of a cabin. But sailing dinghies can indeed provide two of the most important qualities: to stay afloat and to keep their crews alive.

If my critic had done his homework, he’d know that tiny open boats have made remarkable ocean voyages that demonstrate their seaworthiness. I could mention Captain Bligh, for a start, and Webb Chiles, who singlehandedly sailed his open, 17-foot, Drascombe Lugger, Chidiock Tichborne, almost all of the way around the world. And then there was Frank Dye, who sailed his 16-foot Wayfarer dinghy hundreds of miles across the North Sea from Scotland to Iceland, and to Norway.

These sailors provided an element of seaworthiness that their small craft lacked, of course. They were all expert seamen. In fact, when faced with storms at sea, Dye, in his unballasted, centerboard dinghy, would take the mast down, set a sea anchor so that the boat faced into the oncoming seas, and then lie down on the floorboards and go to sleep. “There’s nothing much else to do,” he said. Except pray, perhaps.

In coastal cruising, much of the seaworthiness of a dinghy like the Wayfarer lies in its ability to run for shelter close inshore, to maneuver closely among rocks, and to land on a beach and be pulled up out of harm on inflatable rollers. Larger, less nimble yachts with deep keels would not dare close a shore like that in heavy weather; their only recourse then is to seek deep water offshore, where their seaworthiness will be well tested.

In at least one way, the smaller the sailing dinghy, the more seaworthy it is. That is when the worst happens and the boat capsizes. The smaller the boat, the easier it is for the crew to right her.

The well-found camp-cruising dinghy cannot sink — she has built-in buoyancy. With a sealed mast and boom for flotation, she cannot turn completely turtle, and so the crew can stand on the centerboard to right her. She will also have self-bailers that will draw all the water from the cockpit once she comes upright again and gains way.

So there’s no doubt in my mind that small boats can be seaworthy. They can’t provide all the shelter and comfort of a larger vessel, admittedly, but their closeness to the water provides delicate insights and thrills unknown to those lofty sailors who batter their way through the seas in their seaborne chariots, carefully insulated from both the sea’s danger and its intimate secrets.

Today’s Thought
There are many advantages in sea-voyaging, but security is not one of them.

— Sadi (Emerson, English Traits: The Voyage)

Tailpiece

“Young lady, wouldn’t your mother be angry if she saw you in that skimpy swimsuit?”

“Yeah, I guess so. It’s hers.”

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

 

Why re-invent the wheel?

A COUPLE OF WEEKS BACK, Small Craft Advisor magazine featured a lovely little boat on the cover. She was a 15-foot open dinghy designed by John Welsford, shown sailing miles offshore of Fremantle, Australia, in that gorgeous translucent blue/green water of the southern Indian Ocean.

She was one of Welsford’s most successful designs, a sturdy, multi-chined coastal cruiser/camper with more than 700 sets of plans sold, and dozens having made impressive passages in rough conditions. But, besides being sturdy, the Navigator, as the class is known, is just downright beautiful in the eyes of anyone with a background in sailing.

The one on the magazine cover was rigged as a yawl, with a delicate mizzen and a workmanlike genoa sent from a long bowsprit. The mainsail was a sliding gunter with deep reef points —  altogether a rig that must be easy to balance and simple to control in heavy weather. In the photograph, she was riding over a foaming wave with a bone in her teeth and the tiller held lightly amidships. Her name was Matthew Flinders and I fell in love with her immediately.

But after days of lusting and wondering how long and how much it would cost me to build one, reality began to set in. Why, I wondered, do we keep re-inventing the wheel? What is wrong with the dinghy designs that already exist? Why, for example, should the Navigator be better in any way than the Wayfarer, which the famous British designer Ian Proctor set down on paper in 1957?

Can there be a better sea-boat than the Wayfarer? Frank Dye survived a Force 9 storm in one on a passage from Scotland to Norway many years ago, so she has certainly proved herself on the wide ocean. Furthermore, the Wayfarer is raced as a class in many parts of the world. She is fast. She actually planes. Her Bermuda rig of mainsail and jib is efficient and closewinded, and she is not burdened with an awkward bowsprit and boomkin, as the Navigator is.

The Wayfarer’s hull is a foot longer than the Navigator’s, and about 50 pounds heavier. She is almost certainly faster around the buoys and more weatherly in strong winds. I can’t help wondering if the original client  who sought John Welsford’s skills to design a small boat for family beach cruising and deep-sea sailing had ever heard of a Wayfarer.

The Navigator’s looks exude the old-world charm of a clinker-built boat, that much is certain, but the Wayfarer has the classically simple, conservative lines that have never gone out of fashion.

This line of thought made me realize once again how little is new in the design of small open boats. Advances in technology have allowed large yachts to sail around the world in record times, but nothing much has changed in the performance of dinghies and small yachts of the world, with the possible exception of outré boats like the Moth, whose crews need to be performing acrobats on nautical unicycles.

When I look at Hobie cats, I think of Herreshoff, who designed an award-winning catamaran before any of us was born, and I marvel at how difficult it must be for any modern boat designer to improve on the lines of yachts built generations ago. Re-inventing the wheel is a very challenging task.

Today’s Thought

What we call “Progress” is the exchange of one nuisance for another nuisance.

— Havelock Ellis, Political Mystics: Titan and Avatar

Tailpiece

How can smoking cause sickness when it cures salmon and ham? 

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

Farewell to 'Wetazel'

WHEN I SEE the eight-year-olds buzzing around the marina in their 8-foot Optimists I am always astonished at their confidence and ability. They sit to leeward with big grins on their fearless faces while their gunwales lap the water, and they waggle the tiller with all the panache of salty old professionals.

There were no Optimists in my early sailing days. We were not a sailing family, and I was the only one who showed any interest in the sport. That happened after a chance encounter with a young man sailing a 14-foot Redwing dinghy.  I was on the beach, and as he came past he shouted: “Want to come for a sail?”

I was 13 years old and didn’t know any better, so I said “Yes.” About two years later I discovered the local yacht club. While poking around the dinghy park I came across a boxy-looking 14-foot wooden dinghy that somebody said was “a club boat,” whatever that meant. I kept a close eye on it for some time, and it became obvious that it was never used. In fact I was doubtful that it would float, because the bottom seams had dried out, leaving small gaps between the planks.

After a few months I learned that she was called Wetazel, an appropriate name, and that she was one of a class of singlehanded catboats used in the 1936 summer Olympic Games in Germany. I didn’t know when this one was actually built, but I could tell she was very, very old.

The more I looked at her and poked around her, the more proprietary I became. Nobody at the club showed any surprise when I began acting as if I owned her. One day I took my pocket money and  bought a big can of Pliobond, a sort of liquid rubber. I slathered Pliobond all over her insides and thought in my naivety that it would make her waterproof.

I bent on her rust-stained old mainsail and took her for a sail on the bay one beautiful summer’s day. She leaked, of course, despite all the Pliobond, but I had a bailer and could keep up with it by shoveling out water every 10 minutes or so. No matter,  I was delighted with her. It felt wonderful to be in charge of my own vessel. I was the teenage captain of my own destiny and

free to do what I wanted anywhere on the seven seas.

We were on a dead run, and it was getting time to bail again, when a gust hit us from astern. It depressed the bow just a little and the boatload of bilge water suddenly all charged forward until the bow was under water. She just kept sailing on down and filled completely with water. The steel centerboard dragged her under and she sank from beneath me. I wasn’t wearing a life jacket, of course. No one seemed to in those days. But I could swim, after a fashion, and I managed to make my way to an island sandbank where I stood, shocked and shivering, with water up to my knees for half an hour or so until a little outboard runabout came along by chance and rescued me.

I never said a word to anyone at the club, or at home, about my little misadventure, and nobody ever asked what had become of Wetazel. I consoled myself by thinking that her life was over anyway, and that she had experienced a hero’s funeral. Sort of like a Viking funeral, only wetter. And I have never sailed another boat under since then.  

 Today’s Thought

The sea carries no tracks; one disappears into it and it leaves no trace, returns from it without a mark to show whence one came.

— Edward L. Beach

Tailpiece

Books I dreamed I found in my library:

Mother and Child, by Polly Anderson

The Appointment, by Simeon Mundy

Ceaseless Fall, by Eileen Dover

Shattered Window, by Eva Brick

Front Row of the Stalls, by Seymour Legge

Droopy Drawers, by Lucie l’Astique

Little fleas and lesser fleas

I DON’T KNOW who Augustus de Morgan was, but every time I think about dinghies for yachts I am reminded of something he wrote:

Great fleas have little fleas upon their back to bite ’em,
And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum.

It’s the little fleas of the yacht world that I think about, the tiny fellers I see outboard motoring up the Inside Passageway to Alaska, towing their lesser fleas behind them.

Big yachts have problems enough with their tenders, but it’s the little ones that really suffer. Any boat of 25 feet or under that cannot be beached is going to have to spend time in anchorages, and the question is: How do we get ashore? Hard dinghy? Nesting? Inflatable? Kayak? Folding boat?

Folding boats need space on the side-deck, and not many small yachts can afford it. Kayaks must be towed, but they flip and fill too easily. Inflatables are safe and reliable, but they tow badly. They stick to the water. And deflating them, stowing them, and re-inflating them again at your destination is a pain in the cockpit – or on the foredeck, or wherever you do it.

Hard dinghies tow well, and are the most barnacle-resistant when you drag them ashore, but they’re usually cranky and heavy. They’re also likely to fill with spray or green water in rough seas, although I have towed one 10-footer hundreds of miles in the open Pacific without problems. The secret was to use a 75-foot painter and to weigh down the stern to prevent her from taking a sheer on the front of swells. Furthermore, we had an understanding, that dinghy and I: if ever she gave me trouble, if ever she started running down and ramming my counter, I would cut her free and leave her to fend for herself. That threat was enough, apparently. I never had to carry it out.

L. Francis Herreshoff listed five features for his “ideal tender.” She would:

► Row easily, light or loaded
► Be light enough to be hoisted aboard easily
► Be stiff enough to get into and out of easily
► Be strong enough not to leak, and able to take some abuse
► Tow steadily, always holding back on her painter and never yawing around.

I firmly believe there is no ideal tender, and the smaller the mother yacht the greater the compromises that have to be made. I once used to tow a 10-foot dinghy behind a 22-foot Santana, and I’m sure it looked quite ludicrously out of proportion. But that was the dinghy I had and that was the sacrifice I made. We all have to come to terms with the dinghy problem somehow, and if some people managed it more elegantly than I did, good luck to them. At least the flea upon my back was a nice big fat one.

Today’s Thought
When eager bites the thirsty flea,
Clouds and rain you sure shall see.
— Inwards, Weather Lore.

Boaters’ Rules of Thumb, #179
Next time you break an oar or a rudder in your dinghy, you’ll be glad for a sculling notch in the transom. The usual size for a yacht tender is 1 7/8 inches wide by 2 1/2 inches deep. It should be egg-shaped, slightly narrower at the top than the bottom, and all edges should be well rounded.

Tailpiece
“How did you enjoy the bridge party the other night?”
“It was great — until the cops looked under the bridge”

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

Learn faster in a dinghy

NOW AND THEN somebody asks me, “What’s the best way to learn to sail?” I always tell them to start in a small sailing dinghy, something about 14 or 18 feet in length. But they mostly don’t listen to me. They get seduced by the sailing schools who want to teach them on 35-footers so that they’ll come back to charter the same boats next summer.

Nevertheless, it’s my contention that if you learn to master a dinghy, you’re three-quarters of the way to mastering any deep-sea boat. Maybe more.

Even if you have already learned to sail a fixed-keeler, you might like to go back and start from scratch on a dinghy. Take as long as you need, months if necessary, because this part of the learning process is vital. It will teach you how to balance a hull under sail, something that will stand you in good stead all your sailing life.

In your dinghy, do everything under sail. Beat to windward in restricted channels. Luff up to jetties and buoys to see how much way she carries. Steer without touching the tiller while running and beating. Yes, you can, once you know how.

Use telltales on your shrouds to judge wind direction, and use telltales on your sails so you know what happens when you tension the luff, trim a sheet, or move the lead blocks on the genoa track.

Sail her backwards. It’s fun, and it will teach you why you shouldn’t let a bigger yacht make sternway in a gale. Feel how suddenly and drastically the pressure on the tiller changes when you let it get the slightest bit off-center.

Practice anchoring in your dinghy, anchoring from the bows and anchoring from the stern. Try making the anchor rode fast at different points along the gunwale and see how she lies in respect to the wind, or the swells. And then sail off the anchor.

See how the sail balance, leeway, and steering characteristics change when you raise the centerboard partially, and, above all, learn to heave to. Most dinghies will do it quite gracefully. I once used the technique to scoot sideways along the start line in a very competitive field of racers. With the jib backed and the mainsail flapping, they thought I was out of control and kindly kept clear. It wasn’t until the gun went and I got off to a great start by pulling the jib around and trimming the main, that they realized they’d been had. But I knew better than to try a second time.

One very useful aid to learning to sail is to pace yourself against another identical one-design dinghy. One boat sails normally, the other constantly makes adjustments to everything that can be moved, and usually starts to get ahead. Then the one behind starts making the adjustments, and so on, until both of you are going much faster.

On a seagoing yacht of 35 or 40 feet, the principles of handling and seamanship are almost exactly the same as those of a sloop-rigged dinghy, with these modifications:

► Changes of direction will take longer.

► The bigger boat will carry her way much farther.

► The chances of capsize are greatly reduced.

► The food will be a lot better.

Seamanship is largely a matter of keeping the boat under firm control all the time. It consists of your being in charge of the boat, rather than having the boat take charge of you. You can learn these things on a 35-footer through long and hard experience but a dinghy will bring you enlightenment in a fraction of the time, at minimal cost, and twice the fun.

Today’s Thought
Often ornateness goes with greatness;
Oftener felicity comes of simplicity.
— William Watson, Art Maxims

Boaters’ Rules of Thumb, #169
Although most rudders will stall when angled more than about 35 degrees to the water flow, many light displacement boats will accept a greater angle after the stern has started to swing. But that doesn’t mean the angle of incidence has exceeded 35 degrees, of course. The swinging stern has simply changed the angle of attack.

Tailpiece
“What have I got, Doc?”
“I’m afraid your disease is hereditary.”
“Great. Send the bill to my grandfather.”

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

Ocean dinghy sailing

IT WAS ALWAYS a source of regret to me that my seagoing sailboats were never big enough to carry a sailing dinghy. I always thought a small wooden dinghy would make an ideal lifeboat if the yacht sank, and I always thought I could sail a small dinghy across an ocean if necessary.

By force of circumstance, we always ended up with a rubber duckie that could be deflated and stowed in a cockpit locker; but the problem with an inflatable dinghy (or an inflatable liferaft for that matter) is that most of them are incapable of sailing anywhere, so you just have to sit there and pray that a ship will come your way and rescue you. Nothing deflates morale quicker. People have been known to die in days because they despaired of ever being rescued, whereas others endured long-lasting hardships simply because they were in charge of their own fate, making progress toward land and therefore generating hope.

Because we never had a small wooden sailing dinghy, I never had to do much thinking about the practical aspects of how you survive storms on the open ocean in a small dinghy. It was only years later that I read Frank Dye’s book about his extraordinary voyages from Scotland to Iceland and Norway in his open, wooden, 16-foot Wayfarer dinghy.[1]

On the passage to Norway, Frank and his male crew survived four capsizes in a Force 9 gale in the frigid Norwegian Sea. But ordinary gales never bothered them. The way they dealt with ordinary gales was this:

— They lowered the mast in its tabernacle until the upper end of the mast rested in a boom crutch a few feet above the transom.

— They fastened a cover from gunwale to gunwale over the mast, enclosing all the open cockpit.

— They streamed a parachute drogue from the bows.

— They lay flat on the floorboards to keep their ballast weight low.

The effect of the cover and the drogue was to keep the boat automatically facing into oncoming waves. In fact, the cover, being higher at the stern than near the bows, acted in the same way as a trysail would on a keelboat.

“Under the cover it was difficult to realize that a gale was blowing outside,” Dye remarks in his book with typical British sang froid. The Wayfarer rode well with a slight snatch as the drogue pulled her over each breaking crest. There was a rattle of spray on the cover and an occasional jump sideways as a cross-sea caught her. And in these conditions Dye and his crew even managed to get some rest.

The Wayfarer is a remarkable boat, of course, stable, fast, responsive, and seaworthy. And Frank Dye was an equally remarkable man.

I am grateful to him, because now that I know how to sail a small dinghy across an ocean if necessary, I fervently hope I never have to.

[1] Ocean Crossing Wayfarer, Second Edition, by Frank and Margaret Dye (Adlard Coles Nautical, London, 2008).

Today’s Thought
Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are often stiffened.
— Billy Graham

Boaters’ Rules of Thumb, #117
The knots you need. You can do almost everything you need to on a boat with just two knots, one bend and two hitches — five in all. They are the anchor bend, the bowline, the reef knot, the rolling hitch, and the clove hitch.

Tailpiece
“Why did they transfer your boy friend from that submarine?”
“He has a habit of sleeping with the window open.”

(Drop by Monday, Wednesday, Friday, for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

Mouse-proofing the dinghy

ONE OF THE ASPECTS of sailing that has always fascinated me is the wide range of disciplines involved. Sailing as a sport touches on so many other facets of social and scientific life that it’s almost impossible to list them all.

Perhaps that’s why sailing has always fit in with my former calling as a newspaperman. Competent journalists must know at least a little about a very wide range of subjects, and a whole lot about at least a few. The same goes for amateur sailors.

We need to know (in greater or lesser degrees, depending upon the kind of sailing we do) about meteorology, aerodynamics, hydrodynamics, nutrition, cooking, engine maintenance and repairs, first aid, navigation in all its guises, anchoring, fishing, flag etiquette, the Rule of the Road, the restrictions on dumping refuse overboard, boat design, seaworthiness, tidal movements, ocean currents, ventilation, plumbing, knots and splices, painting and varnishing, electrical systems, sail design and repair, the situation of the nearest cold beer, and … I could go on for hours. It takes years to know even a little about the many subjects connected to sailing. That’s what makes it so endlessly fascinating.

And now we have to know how to thwart mice.

New Englander Carl Thunberg sails a Cape Dory 30 called Leona Pearl. He wrote an impassioned plea on the Cape Dory bulletin board the other day, saying:

“Our very expensive 11-foot rigid inflatable boat is riddled with mouse holes. Does anyone know of a reputable business that repairs holes in inflatable dinghies within a reasonable driving distance of Portsmouth, New Hampshire?”

And how do mice come to eat holes in a rubber dinghy, you ask? Well, many sailors in the Northeast haul their boats out of the water for winter. They deflate their dinghies and store them in garages or barns.

This doesn’t exactly explain why mice would want to chomp holes in them, but believe me, they do. Exactly the same thing happened to Carl’s previous rubber dinghy.

Perhaps Carl’s mice have discovered a new form of winter entertainment, sort of like a spooky fairground haunted house, in which you eat a hole through a layer of rubber dinghy, squeeze through, and run around inside the pitch-dark chamber until you have scared yourself out of your little mousey wits, and then you quickly eat your way out again.

Perhaps they have developed a genuine epicurean liking for salted inflatable fabric, or maybe the dumb critters are hoping that by creating the holes the boat will magically turn into a giant Swiss cheese.

In any case, Carl’s experience is not unique. Other Cape Dory owners offered suggestions from their own experience, the main one of which is to strew the dinghy liberally with a fragrant fabric softener known as Bounce. Rubber dinghies that have been Bounced seem to be immune to rodent chomps.

There are other methods to protect stored rubber dinghies, of course, including barn cats, mouse-proof steel boxes, and, failing all else, the use of hard dinghies instead of rubber ones. But nothing is as cheap and easy as Bounce.

I must make a note of it. I wonder if it works on seagulls?

Today’s Thought
Consider the little mouse, how sagacious an animal it is which never entrusts his life to one hole only.
— Plautus, Truculentus

Tailpiece
“And where have you two been all day?”
“Hi Mom. Daddy took me to the zoo and one of the animals had a full house and made Daddy pay $50 over the table.”

The inside skinny on dinghies

NOW THAT I’M SEARCHING for a new dinghy, I’ve been collecting some facts. The big choice is between an inflatable and a hard dinghy.

Here are some pros and cons for inflatables:

Pro:
They’re compact when you deflate them.
They’re fast even with small outboard motors.
One of their best attributes is that it’s easy for swimmers to climb (or launch themselves) aboard.
For their size, they can carry heavy loads.
Because they are just big fenders, they won’t damage your topsides.

Con:
Barnacles on the rocks will puncture them.
A screwdriver in the back pocket of your jeans will puncture them. Don’t ask.
They are mostly pretty wet and bouncy under power.
It takes time to inflate or deflate them.
They’re fairly expensive.
They don’t stand up well to everyday hard work in tropical climates.
They are very attractive to thieves.

Here are the pros and cons for hard dinghies:

Pro:
They’re better sea boats.
They’re much easier to row — and even sail, if you want.
They’re more durable.
They tow better behind your boat, with less drag.
They’re better able to withstand abrasion.

Cons:
They’re less stable than inflatables.
They’re heavier and bulkier.
They need more stowage space on deck or on stern davits.

On a 27-foot boat like mine, there is simply no space on deck for a hard dinghy. I don’t have a roller furling jib, so I need the foredeck space. But all the same, I am biased toward a hard dinghy, even if it means towing it everywhere on coastal trips.

L. Francis Herreshoff listed his requirements for a hard dinghy as follows:
► It should row easily, light or loaded
► It should be light enough to be hoisted aboard easily
► It should be constructed strongly to it will not leak, and take some abuse
► It should tow steadily, always holding back on its painter and never yawing around.

I’m not sure it’s possible to find a dinghy like that, especially one that will always hold back and never yaw around. But I’ll keep looking. Miracles do happen, they tell me.

Today’s Thought
For she IS such a smart little craft,
Such a neat little sweet little craft —
Such a bright little,
Slight little, Light little,
Trim little, slim little craft!
— W.S. Gilbert, Ruddigore

Tailpiece
You’ve heard of King Arthur’s Round Table, of course. But do you know who was the roundest knight? It was Sir Cumference. And how did he acquire his size? From too much pi, naturally.

The dreaded dinghy decision

THE TIME HAS COME to start thinking about a new dinghy. Groan. I hate having to think about a new dinghy. It’s such an impossible task. There simply isn’t a perfect dinghy for a 27-foot sailboat, no matter how much you pay, no matter how cleverly you build.

I’ve had my old dinghy for about 14 years now. She has served three different boats and been towed in the open ocean for hundreds of miles. She is easy to row and tow and she is about as seaworthy as a dinghy can get. She has never shipped a drop of water. She has never needed an outboard motor, either. I can scull her with one oar over the stern and she’s almost perfect for setting out a second anchor when the weather turns iffy.

But ... she was very rough to begin with, a practice fiberglass shell for some boatbuilding school, probably. I don’t know her origins. She came with a 22-foot sloop I bought. She was obviously designed as a 10-foot outboard fishing skiff, but with a nice sheerline and high flared bows. She is as cranky as all hell and we have to be very careful how we get in and out. But her narrow beam contributes greatly to her seaworthiness. She is heavy, so we have dragged her over the rocks and barnacles for so many years that the wooden skeg is almost completely worn away and the thin fiberglass bottom is deeply scored.

Now she has developed a leak in the after buoyancy compartment and I have been driven nearly crazy trying to find the source. I have even epoxied the whole outer bottom surface of the buoyancy compartment, to no avail. And when her gunwale fenders started peeling off and screws started falling out of the oarlock fittings, I thought to hell with it, enough is enough. Did I mention I once T-boned her with my 25-footer when she was moored sideways across the head of our slip? The gunwales are still cracked.

So we’ll soon take her on one last trip in the islands and then put her out to pasture. Maybe a sandbox for some backyard kids somewhere. Maybe a flower planter in some landscaping project. There’s life in the old gal yet, but it won’t be as our dinghy any more.

Today’s Thought
Change doth unknit the tranquil strength of men.
—Matthew Arnold, A Question

Tailpiece
“That short fortune-teller just escaped from prison.”
“Is that so?”
“Yeah, they’ve just issued an all-points bulletin for a small medium at large.”

Love me tender

CRUISERS UNDER SAIL spend a lot of time searching for the perfect dinghy. A dinghy, for the benefit of those of you who might not know, is the small boat that takes you to shore from your bigger boat. It’s also known as a yacht’s tender.

Tenders are like wives or husbands. None is perfect. There are always others that look more attractive from a distance. But as soon as you try them out you discover that they’re just as full of faults as the one you’ve already got.

After all is said and done, lusting after another one never did anybody any good. It’s more sensible to get used to the one you’ve got and make the most of it.

Let’s face it, you can’t do without one, unless you’re prepared to swim ashore every time you anchor out. But very few of us acquire the one of our dreams. Usually, we just end up with one we can tolerate. Mine, for example, came with a boat I bought. (Yes, yes, tender, not wife.)

But if you don’t have a tender yet, the world is your oyster. There are two major groups, hard or soft, solid or pneumatic. Some are sleek and glamorous and attract a lot of attention, but they’ll cost you an arm and a leg.

What you really need is a sturdy, beamy little workhorse able to carry a large anchor or a week’s provisions with ease. She should be able to take a great deal of abuse and snuggle quietly on your cabin trunk when you’re through with her.

And, of course, there’s no reason why she shouldn’t also be cute and good-looking, in a snub-nosed kind of way.

Today’s Thought
Great Estates may venture more,
But little Boats must keep near Shore. –Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard.

Tailpiece
A sailor, a doctor and a priest were waiting for a particularly slow group of golfers.
“What’s taking these idiots so long?” the sailor asked.
“I’ve never seen such terrible golf,” grumbled the doctor.
“Here comes the greens keeper,” said the priest. “Let’s ask him.”
“Oh, that’s a group of blind firefighters,” the keeper explained. “They lost their sight saving our clubhouse from a big blaze last year, so we always let them play free any time they want.”
The priest said: “That’s so sad. “I’m going to say a special prayer for them tonight.
The doctor said: “Good idea. I’m going to see if there’s anything I can do for them or their families.”
The sailor said: “Why the hell can’t they play at night?”