The DCA forum has been spending quite a bit of time
discussing ‘performance’ in a cruising dinghy.
What are the ultimate criteria for choosing a good cruising dinghy? This
wasn’t a conversation about safety and how to ensure it in a dinghy – more about
cruising performance and associated issues.
Not in any particular order, but forum members quoted the following:
·
Comfortable boat to reduce tiredness and improve
decision making of skipper
·
Reduce dousing by dollops of water over the bow
·
Reasonable windward ability but not super
critical
·
Ditto for speed
·
Habitability under way and at anchor
·
Ability to adapt to different sea and wind
states
·
Reasonable manoeuvrability on land and sea
·
A dodger to reduce wind exposure
·
Minimising the times you need to go out onto the
foredeck – so all sail controls leading aft; roller reefing and furling of jib
·
Perhaps having some rope system that allows
anchoring and its retrieval from midway down the cockpit
·
Appropriate inventory for the cruising grounds
and conditions covered
·
Easy availability of spares
·
Easy to repair
·
Easy towing
·
Ease of launching and retrieval of boat
·
Good ability of boat to run ashore to escape
worsening conditions
·
Does purchase price/cost factor into this list?
·
Insurance costs – a known type/class of dinghy
may well incur cheaper insurance quotes
·
The cost of fuel for the towing vehicle
·
Adequate floatation
I thought it was a very interesting conversation thread and
as always reflected the deep knowledge and experience of DCA members. If you
are a dinghy sailor thinking of dinghy cruising joining the Dinghy Cruising
Association would, in my humble opinion, be a worthwhile move. Intelligent, thought provoking debate about
sailing and dinghies.
As a ‘secret lurker’ on the forum I have learned loads.
As for Arwen. Well she seems to do well on the small craft
safety test; she passed the RNLI free safety inspection. I’m guessing that her
performance is merely limited by the inexperience of her skipper!!
Steve
1 comment:
Bit odd no one mentions ballast - I've been thinking about a ballast keel like the Lazer Stratos keel version on a wayfarer for a while would be a relatively easy conversion - briefly emailed Mr W about same on his AWOL which is a boat I really like alas no time for building at present
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