Photos: David Lyons / Alamy Stock Photo
of ad venture The spirit 26
The humble dinghy can be the perfect craft for an expedition, whether you’re exploring creeks by day or overnighting in a secluded cove. Will 2021 be the year you discover the easygoing appeal of dinghy cruising?
Words: James Stewart
J
ust after lunch one Saturday in June 2019, Will Hodshon and Richard Mitchell sailed west of Salcombe harbour in their wooden Wayfarer dinghy, Nipegegi.
They returned from the east after 1,390 miles and 15 days, holders of a new record for circumnavigating Britain in an open dinghy. Theirs isn’t the only feat of dinghy
daring-do. In 1963 Frank Dye battled Force 8 gales to reach Iceland in a Wayfarer. Then there was the American Webb Chiles, who sailed a production- line Drascombe Lugger around the world between 1978 and 1984. To those I’ll add my own adventure in 1977. My father and I launched his Wildcat dinghy off a Dorset beach. We battled a current sluicing past Mudeford Quay into Christchurch Harbour then spent a day landing on Crusoe-esque sandbanks and evading ‘pirates’. To this seven-year-old it was a trip as heroic as any circumnavigation. And that’s the thing about dinghy cruising. People often see yachts as the
only vessels for cruising adventures. Actually, with a modest shift in perception, a dinghy is even better. Roger Barnes cottoned on to this when he realised a yacht limited his weekend cruises from the River Avon. ‘It took me two hours to sail to the sea, then there were really only two destinations,’ he says. ‘But over a weekend I could tow my Tideway dinghy almost anywhere: the Lake District, the Menai Straits, the Humber. I could reach France in a day for a long summer cruise. There was so much variety! And if you chose well, the tide was exactly right for each trip.’
the art of simple sailing
Roger did the maths at the end of that season and worked out that he’d cruised more miles in the dinghy than he ever achieved in the yacht. As well as accelerating the sale of his yacht, that lightbulb moment led Roger to become president of the Dinghy Cruising Association (
www.dinghycruising.org.uk), established in 1955 and now 700 members strong. Today he is a
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