Dinghy pitfalls and how to avoid them
Rachael Sprot, former director of Rubicon 3, is a Yachtmaster Instructor with an impressive number of sea miles logged, from Lofoten to St Lucia and beyond.
Some of the best adventures aren’t had in big boats, but in little ones. You gain access to the upper reaches of rivers, isolated coasts and drying harbours. If you’re stuck in a rut of the same marinas but don’t have the time to go further afield, a decent dinghy can open up new areas within the same cruising ground. Don’t go further, go smaller.
I joined Kellie Grice and Jess Harrison in Largs for a weekend of cruising around Bute and the Cumbraes. It provided lots of opportunities for anchoring and dinghying ashore and even involved a real-life dinghy rescue. Kellie owns an 11-ton Hilyard, Seraphina, which she has lovingly restored. She lives on board with her dog, Rowan.
All sailors who have used dinghies, however, will have come across some of the challenges of using a small inflatable to get to and from a cruising yacht. Whether it’s inflating, launching, boarding or landing a dinghy, there are plenty of opportunities to get a wet backside. The contortions required to get an outboard onto the transom or to clamber from yacht to tender are enough to put us off trusting our lives to what is little more than a child’s beach toy. With this in mind, I set about identifying the main pitfalls and the tricks you can employ to avoid them.
INFLATING AND LAUNCHING
One of the biggest deterrents to using a dinghy is wrestling a dead whale through the forehatch and giving yourself cramp pumping the thing up with a toy balloon pump. If you want to use your tender, you need to make it easy for yourself, both in where you stow it and how you inflate it.
STOW ON DECK
While you may feel more comfortable stowing a dinghy in a locker or below deck for offshore passages or rough weather, find a way to store it, deflated, on deck, unless you have extremely accessible cockpit lockers. A stowage bag with flaps will protect it from UV and give some securing points to lash it on deck to the coachroof, mast foot or toe rails
STOW INFLATED
Stowing an inflated dinghy upside down on the foredeck works well for short passages
