The dinghy dock at the Sands Hotel and Bar in Barra de Navidad, Mexico.


Dinghy vs Car? By Erin Russ A few months before we left Seattle,


Stephan, the previous owner of our boat who sailed it nearly around the world, drove down from Bellingham to help us with a few boat projects. Over lunch he told us how important the dinghy is when you’re out cruising. “It’s your car,” he said. “It’s what you carry groceries in, what you travel to shore in… Your life on the boat is dependant on having a reliable dinghy, just like life on land is dependant on having a reliable car.” Before that afternoon, Brian and I


never thought of our small inflatable boat as anything more than that. Most sailboats had a dinghy, so we did too. Often we’d leave it tied to the dock when we sailed away for the weekend— we used our kayaks to explore new anchorages, and the dinghy just took up space on deck. Only once did we use our dinghy in place of a car in Seattle: we ferried our laundry to the marina laundromat, ten docks away, rather than driving it there. And we giggled like schoolgirls the whole way. We felt like renegades as we pulled our bag of dirty clothes from the bottom of a dinghy rather than the trunk of a parked car. But we knew all of that would


change when we went cruising. So before we left, we sold our land cars and bought our new water car: a nine- foot Rigid Inflatable Boat (RIB) with a hard, aluminum bottom and big inflatable tubes on the sides. It doesn’t complain when we drag it onto a rocky beach; it’s light enough for us to lift and carry over sandbars; and it has room to carry the two of us plus a week’s worth of groceries. And like Stephan said, we use our dinghy everyday, just like we used our cars back home. But what he didn’t mention was


something that might have been obvious to him at the time, but was something that I’d overlooked during our conversation: a dinghy is really nothing at all like a car. Sure, you use it


A dinghy is really nothing


at all like a car. Sure, you use it as much as a car; you go places in it just like a car… But comparing a dinghy to a car is like comparing a motorcycle to a skateboard. It’ll get you from A to B, but in two very different ways.


as much as a car; you go places in it just like a car… But comparing a dinghy to a car is like comparing a motorcycle to a skateboard. It’ll get you from A to B, but in two very different ways. Some of the differences are obvious:


a dinghy is a boat, there aren’t any tires, and it uses an outboard engine to propel it. But some of the differences aren’t obvious until you use a dinghy day after day. Here are five reasons why traveling


by dinghy is nothing like traveling by car.


1. A dinghy floats. I know I said this


one was obvious—a dinghy, after all, is a boat. But the reason I bring this up is because getting in and out of a floating car is much different than getting in and out of a car on land. When it’s tied to the side of the boat we have to climb


I’ve nicknamed our


outboard Ramon, and Ramon has a disagreeable personality. When we were anchored in La Paz, Ramon decided to take a night off when the current was running 3-knots against us. Brian had to paddle 200 yards to our boat, a feat that took more than 30 minutes.


down a ladder—a six-foot span—to get into it. And in most anchorages the boat is rocking from side to side, and so is the dinghy (usually at a different rate than the boat). So timing our entry from the ladder to the dinghy is crucial to avoid falling directly into the water. It’s also pretty slippery from being outside all night, and sandy and salty from our last trip to shore. 2. A dinghy has no doors or


windows to protect us from the elements. We have a pretty powerful outboard—a 15-horsepower Honda, which can propel us through the water at 23 mph. But if there are choppy seas, which there usually are, the dinghy bounces hard and so do we. There are handles to hang onto—like the “Oh Shit” handles in a car, only down next to our legs. These are crucial to help us stay inside the dinghy during rough rides. Also, if it’s raining there’s no roof or windshield to shelter us, and the rain pelts us in the face at 23 mph. We could slow down but then we’d just prolong the painfully rough and wet ride. 3. There are no dinghy parking


lots. This one, again, seems obvious. Just like there are no dinghy lanes or dinghy speed limits, there are no dinghy parking lots. Some towns have created pseudo parking lots—the marina in La Paz has a dock where you can tie up your dinghy and leave it there all day, with a security guard watching over 48° NORTH, JULY 2010 PAGE 41


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