“Ready to take the dink ashore?” Never had those words invoked as much anxiety as when my husband, Jeff, and I first moved to the Pacific Coast. Why? Because we had exactly zero experience with dinghy surf landings, and the possibility of being flipped upside down along with our ...read more
The rigmarole of stretching a cover over a dinghy in choppy water prior to hoisting it on davits can become a very wet business if you’re not careful. Leaning right over either end, trying to stretch a cover over the bow and stern pods can quite easily result in a head-first dip ...read more
All last winter the faded red Achilles inflatable floated in an empty slip, a rose with its bloom most definitely gone, abandoned, I was told, by a cruiser who’d moved up to a RIB. In the autumn gales she filled with rainwater and in the coldest New England months, she cradled a ...read more
In the pantheon of mythical creatures—right up there with unicorns, hippogriffs and manticores—we have in the realm of cruising a most important one: the perfect dinghy. This, of course, is a very subjective concept that exists in Platonic form in every sailor’s mind, but never ...read more
LET THERE BE LIGHT Summer evenings in crowded anchorages or mooring fields are part and parcel of the coastal cruising life, and there is always some activity after dark as stragglers arrive or cruisers run to shore and back in their dinghies. It’s only common sense (and also ...read more
The lifejacket was an afterthought. The visitor had motored his way up the river, and I’d waved him over toward a vacant club mooring nearby. Sitting in my cockpit sipping coffee in the morning sunlight, I’d watched him, solo, make two failed attempts to hook the pickup. There ...read more
Before choosing which inflatable dinghy is right for you, there are many factors to consider Some sailors claim that the inflatable boat has killed the traditional rowing sailing tender. I don’t think so. I think that it was the development of small, lightweight and reliable ...read more
