The Dinghy Intervention

Taking novices sailing can be an eye-opening experience. Just when you thought you had seen it all, a novice can throw a completely new way of getting things wrong into the mix. Add in a celebratory drink or two and you have a recipe for disaster.

To get out to Isosceles requires using a dinghy to go from the dock to my mooring. For me this is second nature, just climb in and row, it isn’t far across from the main marina, in fact it's further to walk from the entrance of the marina to the dinghy dock than to row from there to Isosceles.

It's easy to forget when you've been around boats and water all your life that this is not second nature to everyone.

Isosceles on her mooring, it's just a short row from the main marina.

There are basically 2 types of dinghy that people use to get between their boats and the shore, inflatable dinghies and solid dinghies. Both have their advantages and disadvantages. I have both and prefer the solid dinghy, which is much more robust and easier to row. However the Inflatable with its big chamber of air all around it is much more stable, especially for novices. Unfortunately for the purposes of my story I was using the nicer, but also less stable, solid dinghy.

The Sea Hopper(c) dinghy, lovely to row, and very much my preferred transport off the boat,
but they can tip if you get your balance wrong

The last time I bought this particular friend to visit the boat was during one of the brief respites from 2020's Covid-19 lockdowns, and we were both celebrating birthdays. While I must confess too much alcohol was involved, the calamity of dinghy disasters is a whole story in its own right. I will however try to spare the blushes of others, by not naming names!

Dinghies are small boats, very light weight. It is the people inside them that provide balance. If all the weight in a dinghy is on one side then it becomes unstable, the slightest thing could tip it over. Weight, especially the people in the dinghy, needs to be concentrated along the middle of the boat. There are times when you might do things a little differently, if there is 3 or 4 people in a dinghy for example, but the principle of keeping the centre of weight in the middle and away from the edges is still the way to go.

Getting into and out of the dinghy is always a dodgy time. People have to move to get in and out, and so the balance of the dinghy is upset and every movement makes the dinghy move which is not good for those with dinghy nerves.

Inflatable dinghies, cumbersome and sometimes difficult to row,
but much more stable, especially for a novice.

Getting into the dinghy this particular weekend was going so well, until the dinghy started to be unbalanced and lean to one side, which made my nervous novice even more nervous, even panicky. Unfortunately this made her stop in her tracks, thinking everything would settle down and she could then carry on. Getting in and out of a dinghy isn't like that. If you stay on the edge when the thing is unbalanced then it's going to stay unbalanced, and probably keep getting worse. Even more unfortunately the excess alcohol on my part slowed my response and I didn't see the inevitable coming. Over went the dinghy and both of us with it.

Luckily, we were in the harbour along with some friends who we had been in the bar with, and so with help we managed to get out on to the side of the dock. It was just one of those things, and after settling ourselves down, and the bar manager making sure we were all uninjured, we set off again. This time we managed to get into the dinghy easily, proving it could be done without mishap.

We got out to Isosceles without incident and I got the rope to tie us on around the boat. I asked my now damp and nervous novice to reach for the ladder on the back of the boat and pull it down so we could climb up on to the boat and safety. She gave it a tug, it didn't move. She pulled a little harder on the ladder and it moved a little, she gave it one last pull, and pulled the dinghy straight over. We were in the water again. My friend was by now ready to swear off boats forever.

The boarding ladder on the back of Isosceles,
from a dinghy the only way to get up on to the boat.

Getting from the water turned into a major situation. Luckily one of the motor boats had seen us leaving the marina and with trepidation had continued to watch us as the calamity unfolded. I will be forever thankful that they motored out and picked us up and got us on to the deck of Isosceles.

We were lucky to have friends close by, especially the second time. Falling out of the dinghy in the main channel of a harbour could have been so much worse. I consider myself a reasonable swimmer, but after being in the water twice, fully clothed, and having had a drink, I was beginning to struggle. If it hadn't been for the quick thinking of others, I wouldn't like to think of the consequences too much.

I later discovered after that when the boat had been launched a few days before, one of the yard hands had seen the ladder wasn't secured up and, thinking he was doing me a favour, he had secured the ladder so it would never have been able to be pulled down.

Dinghy Intervention Weekend

Fast forward nearly a year and I have just spent a weekend undertaking a "dinghy intervention". Even if my friend was never to visit the boat again I would never have been able to live with the thought of me being a part of increasing her fear of the water and small boats to such a degree that it couldn't be overcome. I had to do something before the fear became entrenched.

Dinghy "rules" are not complicated, but when a person has lost all confidence in dealing with a task they begin to over think things and then they can do odd and unpredictable things. At the beginning of the weekend I was having to talk my nervous novice through each small step towards getting into a dinghy, from sitting on the edge of a pontoon to edging her feet into the middle of the dinghy, then persuading her to make one single movement to sitting on the seat. After finding every excuse I could to go back and forth in the dinghy, 12 times in 3 days, we were finally at the point where she was able to swing herself into and out of the dinghy with little help and no prompting. At least some of the damage had been undone.

The lessons of this experience are quite simple:

• Alcohol and water don't mix. If you want that extra drink, wait until you are safely back on the boat.
• If you have a novice in your care keep you senses sharp, if people don't know what to do they can do the most unexpected of things.
• Wear buoyancy aids or life jackets in the dinghy, ESPECIALLY when you've been to the bar.

While I have been going over this whole escapade it has occurred to me, with the ladder secured up I would never have been able to get back on board without the help of the motor boat. Even getting from the dinghy onto the boat would have been impossible. I have always said that the ladder should not be secured, if someone is in the water and needs to use the ladder on my boat I would rather they could get to safety. The clips securing the ladder have now been removed.