On board the WTP we have everything we need to eat, sleep, work, and go to the bathroom. But when we get cabin fever and want to travel ashore to explore the local town market or culture, we need a dinghy! Why? because the sailboat cannot sail in water any shallower than 6 feet (which means if you don't carry a smaller boat with you, you are going to be swimming to shore).
---STORY TIME----
"The day we almost lost the Dinghy" (lets hope its the last)
Date: Jan 16th 2010
Time: around 6:00pm (after sunset)
We had sailed all day from sunup to sundown upwind. The boat was heeled most of the day and we had tacked a number of times while keeping a close watch for coral heads (to make sure we avoided them) while crossing Sapodilla bay. It was blowing around 18 knots and we had one reef in the mainsail. We were making good progress, but the sun was setting and we were about 5 miles from our anchorage. On our next tack (around 5pm) we dropped the headsail and the mizzen and motor-sailed (sailing with the motor on) the last stretch to make it through a narrow deeper section into the anchorage. I had jumped into the dinghy that was being towed behind us and bailed out the water that had splashed into it while we were sailing. The dinghy was secure.
Sunset was at 5:25pm. At around 5:45, the sun was under the horizon and there was just a hint of yellow orange glow behind us illuminating a small island to our south. Adam looked back instinctively like checking your rear view mirror while driving and something was a little off.
"ALAN! Where is the Dinghy"? He shouted into the wind (where I was keeping watch on the bow at the time). "You mean it's gone"? i asked. It was pretty unbelievable. I had seen the line secured to the cleat not more than 45 minutes before and it had been secure almost all day long. We immediately made an about face and headed back toward the dying glow of the sunset. Adam carefully backtracked over our same GPS track to give us the best chance of spotting our beloved dinghy. In that 45 minutes we had gone about 3 and a half miles. We just hoped we could spot it in the darkness.
Trevor and I went quickly down below and gathered the binoculars and night-vision scope. We started scanning the horizon from the bow. It was getting very dark and hard to see and we were still 3 miles from where we made the turn and the last point at which we know we still had the dinghy attached. It had to be somewhere between here and there. We figured it had drifted downwind too and were looking mostly in that direction. About 20min went by (although it felt like an hour following our track). It was just plain dark now. No moon, only starlight. We were sure it had to be close. We were all very engaged in the search, but in the backs of our minds we were thinking, 'man where in the world are we going to find another dinghy? this stinks.' Then all I could think about was how our poor little dinghy was just bobbing out there in the cold and what an awful feeling he must have had as he lost his grip and watched us motor away without even noticing. It must have been like that feeling you get when you miss your bus ride home from school and think that there is no way for you to get home. "What is That"!? shouted Adam over the wind. I turned to light it up with the spotlight and sure enough, there was our little dinghy sitting there, sadly hoping we would come back for him. He was floating just yards from our track but we almost motored right past him in the dark since we were all looking far off in the distance.
We motored close and hooked the bow line, I led it back and reattached the tow line with the most secure knot I know. Relieved, we congratulated each other on a job well done and headed back for the anchorage. What a relief it was too. Without a dinghy, we are "boat locked" and unable to get to shore. Thank you dinghy for patiently waiting for us to return and collect you - and don't do that again!
-THE END
More about our dinghy:
Our dinghy is about 8 feet long and quite seaworthy in all but the nastiest choppy sea. It can be rowed with oars (which we use mostly) or sailed with a small sailing rig. It can hold 3 people + gear max or 4 people very carefully and only in flat water. We usually store the dinghy on-deck in mounts made specifically for it. When we are at a destination or just making small day hops in relatively calm protected water (not offshore) we tow the dinghy with a tow line.
When we go to shore, we lock the dinghy to something permanent like a tree or dock cleat with a bicycle cable lock so that it is sure to be there when we return. We also keep a bailer made out of a gatorade bottle in the dinghy for bailing it out if we ever get some water over the side.
Things we use the dinghy for:
Most importantly, traveling from shore to the boat. It carries: our laundry, our computer, our water jugs, our shower sprayer, our food from the market, our bicycles, our scooters, and us but not all at the same time so many times more than one trip is necessary.
Our dinghy is also well suited for snorkeling and diving. You can throw your gear in and row out to a coral head and drop a small anchor. The dinghy will wait right there for you while you enjoy the underwater wildlife. If you see a shark you can jump back into the dinghy! And no, I have not seen a shark yet.