The
Dinghy
Cruising
Association

Articles

What is a dinghy?
Former DCA President Peter Bick makes a gentle dig at those members who sail something slightly bigger!

Sleeping Aboard
DCA member 0002 John Deacon describes the joys of sleeping on a 14'dinghy and John Reeve gives good advice on boat camping techniques

A Steel Centreplate for Jacona!
Ken Dickinson writes about the installation of a heavy steel centreplate in his Wanderer dinghy.

The Crabclaw Rig
Bernie Stocks writes in appreciation of the Crabclaw Rig!

The Not so Secret Diary of Edward Jones -
aged 65 and three quarters!
Ted Jones describes a cruise around the Thames Estuary

A Farne Islands Pilot
Ed Wingfield shares his knowledge of these magical islands off Lindisfarne on the NE coast of the UK. Not a cruising region for the faint hearted but well worth the effort.

A Lindisfarne (Holy Island) Pilot
More gen from Ed Wingfield on this beautiful stretch of England's North Eastern Coast.

Dinghy Cruising Check list
People leave home and trail miles to their crusing ground, only to find that they've left a vital piece of equipment back at base. I've often forgotten the sail battens, and the binoculars but I read of someone who left the rudder behind. Make a checklist! Here's a basic check list which you can modify according to your own needs.

Which Dinghy?
... find the 'right' cruising dinghy?

Roger's Reefing Refinement.

....an elegant refinement to the slab reefing system, as applied by DCA president Roger 'Bailer' Barnes.

Huntingford's Helm Impeder

Published by popular demand, here is a simple and cheap way of contolling the helm while you pour a drink, have pee, harpoon a whale....

South Coast Region Newsletter Archive
Liz Baker keeps the South Coast members informed with a regular newsletter. The originals are very nicely presented with appropriate graphics etc. This presentation is echoed in the web version, but preserved in its entirety on the pdf download versions.

The origin of the word dinghy is beyond dispute. It is well documented that it comes from the Hindi or Bengali word dingi or dengi, which means a native rowing boat used on Indian rivers. Modern English dictionaries define it as 'a small boat propelled by oars, sail or motor.' Older dictionaries as 'a small extra boat in a man-of-war or a small pleasure rowing boat'; also allowing the alternative spellings, dingey or dingy.

Still what does a dinghy mean to us personally? This is undoubtedly a subjective matter. It probably depends upon the sort of boat that was so described to us when we were young, or of which we learnt in print. When I was a boy; brought up on the books of Arthur Ransom and Aubrey de Selincourt, a dinghy was of clinker construction and certainly did not have any decking as I understood that such craft were called half decked or three-quarter decked boats. The only sailing dinghies that I heard of were lug-sailed clinker dinghies or National 12's and International 14's, all undecked at the time. Then as now I couldn't understand how the National 18 could be described as a racing dinghy.

By the time I joined the DCA I had learnt a lot more but my bible was still Alan Earl's 'Dinghy Cruising'. I therefore suffered a bit of a culture shock when I was told that a dinghy should have some decking to be a good cruising dinghy. I was also amazed at what was accepted as a dinghy. Some had cabins on them, and some were even stretched out to 20 feet or more in length. I wasn't disturbed by the term motor dinghy as the inboard powered version has an honourable place amongst traditional craft. Still there never seems to be any in our membership list.

I have since wondered whether it is possible to truly define a dinghy... It is to be hoped that in choosing to sail dinghies we are taking pleasure in a simpler form of boating. In this case the ideal dinghy should perhaps be small, light in weight and uncomplicated. In order to achieve these aims we must do away with decking and ballast. There are thus three characteristics that a dinghy should have - smallness, openness and being unballasted. Nevertheless we must first define them.

I think that it is acceptable that 'small' should mean no longer than 14 feet. 'Open' has to mean open. Any sort of decking which sheds water overboard is unacceptable. Besides, yachts with 'non self-draining' cockpits were quite common until recently so one cannot accept this feature when defining a craft as open. The early International 14's were not allowed decking or self-bailers in order to encourage their crews to sail in a seamanlike way.

'Unballasted' is a more difficult term and we normally accept that the crew in a dinghy is acting as moveable ballast. However, tradition decrees that metal centreplates are not really ballast and certa inly don't do much for stability when of the thickness usually found on traditional craft. Any other type of weight designed to help the boat come upright is.

It is apparent that if a craft is going to comply on all three counts it will have to have a more seaworthy shape than most of the craft we are used to, having no deck to keep the water out.. It could be argued that with the accent on buoyancy and decking, modern dinghies are becoming more like giant ping-pong balls. These features largely separate past dinghies from the present. However, if we accept that for a craft to qualify as a dinghy it has to have only two of the features mentioned then most members could rest easy.

Perhaps we should encourage the pur sang by offering reduced subscription to members owning only small, open and unballasted craft?