Dinghy cruising? I’ve done a fair bit, from family cruising in the 80s with a Mirror dinghy to mucking about in a Bosun near Shepperton.

There are few activities that I could recommend with greater gusto. Ratty’s quote from The Wind In The Willows about the value of boating activity is so well-known it need not be reprinted here.

There are numerous ways to enjoy cruising in a small dinghy; whittled down to 30, even…

1. Read up and plan

You can go dinghy cruising without moving. Perhaps the best way to begin is with a good story, tucked up abed, floating off like Iggle Piggle in the end credits of In The Night Garden, his single lightbulb hoisted on his bare mast (in compliance with Colregs), and snuggling down with a little red blanket.

A recommended entry point to the universe of dinghy cruising literature would be The Lugworm Chronicles. In his book, Ken Duxbury describes taking his Drascombe Lugger from England to the Mediterranean and back.

As the president of the Dinghy Cruising Association, Roger Barnes, says in his introduction to the Lodestar Books edition: ‘It is an exciting story, but not an adventure hopelessly unattainable by the rest of us. No extremes of fortitude nor absurdly large amounts of money were required.’

2. Sort your stowage space

Thinking about space for your adventure is key. Your craft will need to accommodate your person, primarily (it’s easy when planning to skip over this most important of considerations).

The crew will need seating space, preferably with that ‘wiggle room’ that comes to mean so much on a longer trip.

Buoyancy aids (flotation devices for inland waterways and close inshore work) are bulky in front and behind.

So bear in mind the space between the boom and the deck or gunwales, as you’ll have to bend forward to dip your head under the boom.  Chunky foam over your midriff can restrain this.

Hefty buoyancy aids rising from your back have been known to catch on a travelling boom even when it has missed your head.

Differently-abled sailors will require adequate, preferably stable accommodation space.

Ensure any access adjustments don’t compromise safety: for instance, a small craft can have a transom or landing-craft bow that descends like a drawbridge for a scooter or wheelchair to drive abroad.

This door must be absolutely watertight and maintained in line with the latest Maritime and Coastguard Agency recommendations.

3. Organise your funds

Dinghy cruising is less expensive than yachting, if only because there are shorter lengths overall, you are often trailering, and you have a simpler vessel with fewer moving parts.

That said, I’ve been naive very often, and a trip to the Lake District from southern England, for example, cost a lot more than I thought it would.

Factor into your budget the land transfer to the target area. Allow for contingencies in your financial plans.

Budget for meals and accommodation ashore if you don’t fancy camping afloat, and any mooring fees.

A beach might be free if you stay within the tidal range, but if you need to walk inland, you wouldn’t want to be fined.

4. Find a good fit

Different boats suit different missions. When acquiring a boat (perhaps on Boatshed or Woodenships’ small craft, via your local sailing club, Gumtree, Preloved, or even new from the RYA Dinghy Show), think about how easy it’ll be to haul up a slipway or a beach, single-handed.

What kind of effort will you be putting in for your sailing experiences? The economy of effort is a key equation to consider.

What energy you have to expend on a day trip exploring some marshland might be seriously diminished by the effort of hauling your craft into the water in the first place.

Horses for courses is the obvious advice. You don’t need a fully battened composite mainsail for creek-crawling. Short trips don’t need Arctic gale-thickness canvas. Sails should be light.

To find a good fit, think literally as well: Where will the helm sit? Can they reach the sheets and the tiller without leaning over and obstructing something else? Will you have to step over the tiller or dodge around it when you turn? Can you grab the sheets properly when you do this?

Consider your crew. It might be fun for a younger crewmember to pole out a headsail. But trimming even the smallest spinnaker might be unmanageable for them.

5. Get trained

The RYA dinghy sailing scheme is clearly stratified in its expectations of the candidates for each level of qualification.

You can expect to take a course at an accredited RYA training centre and come away with confidence in your achievement, or a serious assessment of your skill level and professional advice on how to improve.

However, be aware that no qualification is required to sail a vessel of any size and this article has as its focus sailing as the chief joy of dinghy cruising.

If you want dinghy cruising to be free of any programme or assessment, if you want to be free from any racing calendar or dare I say, club duties, then you can.

But wise words here would be never go out alone, and have an RYA-accredited instructor at least give their informal verdict on your sailing skills as soon as you can.

Dinghy cruising is like mountain hiking: usually free (at least if you live next to the hill or have free parking). No power can stop you from running to the top of Ben Nevis barefoot, but you’d be ill-advised to do so, especially in poor weather and bereft of training or experience.

6. Cart it

A sturdy trailer will be required if you’re transporting your vessel by road.

Consequently, a vehicle with enough horsepower, a towing hook and a light board electrical connection will be needed to shift it.

Trailer tyres should be well-inflated, and the wheels turn true and at right angles to the axle.

A jockey wheel at the trailer apex is worth its weight in gold for that turn to the towing hook, and to aid that lift up to fit the cup onto the hook.

If your road trailer is also your launch trolley, the jockey wheel is wonderful for helping you cart the boat about a dinghy park.

Alternatively, you may be able to ‘park’ your boat in the ‘dinghy lot’ or, if it is fairly large, it can be kept on a mooring during the season.

Alternatives for shifting boats around on land are little carts (like a piano dolly but ‘marinised’), and also don’t forget the merits of rolling a hull towards the water atop a series of fenders.

Eyebrows might be raised at this technique owing to its resemblance to the log train which brought the monoliths to Stonehenge.

Let the observers smirk, for at least on mud you will be spreading the hull’s weight far more effectively than narrow trailer wheels.

7. Trailer to your local slip

Keeping your boat in an off-street parking space or your front garden keeps costs down. Recce your local slip. Scour appropriate information sources for slipway fees.

Consider where there are dedicated spaces for leaving trailers. Do you have to park your tow vehicle in the same zone or a separate one?

How long you spend preparing the boat on shore deserves serious thought. You don’t want to block the ramp for others, but you also want to take care on a slimy concrete slope.

Dinghies are often seen on the slip with mains rigged but jibs left down.

Raising the main when afloat has its disadvantages for stability, although a mainsheet would only be whipping about on a transom horse for a shorter time than if the sail were hoisted on land.

Flailing jib sheets are never good on the slip, not least because they’re at head height for little ones.

8. Go off the beach

Calm days are best for launching from beaches. Beware rip tides, covering rocks, reefs and breaking waves.

Make the tide your ally, and time your trip correspondingly.

Check access to the seafront and find somewhere to leave your trailer (unless you have a friendly tractor or are trying the fender-roller technique).

If you are arriving at a different beach – say one across the same estuary – the same considerations apply.

Ken Duxbury came ashore on one Cornish beach to be told by ‘a lonely traffic warden’ there had been ‘no ‘Arbourmaster since Lord knows when, back-along they was rummagin’ for tin!’

9. Gravel pit

Dinghy cruising is not just about the sea!

A filled-in quarry can accommodate sailors as much as water skiers, divers, canoeists and swimmers…

10. Toilet matters

Not to be forgotten in any list of dinghy cruising considerations is the toilet. A larger vessel might take a chemical loo, but a bucket may be more likely.

Ashore, you can set up a tent screen. In wild-camping style, though, you can disappear into the bush with loo roll in a plastic bag and a trowel…

11. Outboard it

A flat, calm day on a canalised river almost begs for a quiet motor. The River Nene in Cambridgeshire, near Market Deeping, is well-sheltered from the Fen surrounding, owing to the high banks of its channel.

The views are extensive, still, and even if you are motoring, it is indubitably serene.

12. Go punting

Not sailing doesn’t necessarily mean motoring.

You don’t need a punting pole, full oars or even a boat hook, the handle end of a telescopic paddle can shunt you from the side of a river or even the bottom if it’s shallow enough.

Dipping under a bridge, the vessel can be directed just fine with handholds on the underside of the structure.

13. Aided paddling

A kayak or canoe can travel well with a wind scoop, an umbrella or a dinghy spinnaker from an upturned oar.

You might even get an assist from a dog, keeping lookout on your foredeck.

Your canine won’t be much use though, when you need to drag the hull across a bunch of reeds to portage from one waterway to another.

14. Grapnel out

Swing your grapnel anchor out to stop for a picnic. Go mudlarking. Sling out your kedge.

A stone wrapped in a Killick Hitch will answer too.

15. Anchor fore and aft

Two anchors, fore and aft, will stop you swinging in a tight space.

This is good for rivers with heavy flow volumes or strong tidal streams.

16. Ghost along

Experience the peace of life afloat by keeping your sails up even when there is absolutely no wind.

The bonus is that the sounds of wildlife and rustling vegetation become more perceptible.

Land smells become more ripe; we cruise to savour such things.

Waggling the tiller or leaning out to roll the boat may be the only option for turning through and away from the wind.

It’s not exactly being caught in irons, but just waddling in almost no wind, going nowhere.

A boom set high on the mast is good for this situation. You can paddle and ‘sail’ at the same time- in which case can you do it without getting your noggin clonked by a boom that’s too low?

17. Picnic

A dinghy can cruise to a sandbank and go aground between tides with less worry than a yacht.

With a boom crutch up and a screen to shield the wind, a methylated spirits stove will be easier to light, and bring you your tea more quickly.

Bear in mind freshwater storage aboard if you plan picnics a lot.

18. Swim

Head to a swimming hole, to a beach, to a river mouth… There is magic in this activity… less so when trying to climb aboard again without capsizing the boat.

On an extended cruise, when swimming from the boat, beware that dinghies don’t carry much in the way of first aid items to treat coral cuts or ear infections.

19. Camp under a boom tent

Larger vessels are best for this. A Hawk went up to the top of the Baltic with this as a key accommodation option.

Keeping dry is key as getting the bedding arrangements in order often involves stuffing clothing into corners, wrapping and burying bags.

Squeezing into a ‘coffin berth’ on a smaller yacht has nothing on shuffling your body under a thwart to obtain the maximum flat surface area.

Unlike a tent, a sailing dinghy has a fair number of solid things (blocks, lines, clips etc) that project uncomfortably into your living space.

Unlike a tent, there is little height for mattresses or foam.

20. Camp ashore

With your boat secure (say drawn up on a beach or shingle) you can spend a night under canvas.

Sailors won’t need to wake in the night to check their boats or reset guy lines. Being ashore is more comfortable than afloat (speaking of dinghies) and permits more extended cruising.

21. Cruise in company

The Dinghy Cruising Association is your first port of call for joining one of their excellent rallies.

Apart from the laughter and fireside tales, a cruise in company provides ready assistance for launching and retrieving, tent-pitching, cooking, and even navigation.

22. Solo it

DCA president Roger Barnes says one joyful aspect of solo cruising is ‘monastic simplicity’, and he hits the nail on the head.

Think about boundaries, in terms of wind speeds and cruising grounds.

Remember the comfort factor of having to tend jib sheets while staying on course. Do you need a piece of elastic (bungee good, surgical tubing better) to stabilise the tiller while doing so?

23. Post-race workout

Forget the division between cruising and racing. Race, then keep going after the race finishes!

Hiking out and trapezing is one for the sportier cruisers, maybe…

24. Fish

I’ve never caught anything, but those in the know will take their time and sort out the finest bait suited to the most likely catch.

They will be cruising without any unnecessary sound. The anchor will be dropped, or the boat hove-to, in exactly the right spot, say where the weed streams one way or another for the tide that brings in the shoals this way and that.

They will exercise a great deal of patience. Fishing takes dedication, is all I can say as an observer.

Watching someone else fish is perhaps among the finest of dinghy cruising add-on activities. It is easy to get mesmerised by gazing, at least in the clearer waters of this world, by the colour and tranquillity of the deep.

25. Go gourmet

Too lumpy for a picnic? Out of fuel for your stove? Sandwiches get soggy?

Well, you can pretend that eating alfresco was never the plan. Similar to tip number 20, above, but without the canvas element.

Yes, go ashore at your destination to dine at a restaurant or cafe. You may have to be appropriately attired for the more exclusive establishments – and you may not be able to say you left your credit card in the car – but the arrival of the gourmet dinghy cruiser might be the last word in style.

26. Film reenactment

Peel Island on Coniston Water is the place to go if you want to re-enact Swallows and Amazons, specifically the film of 1976.

The rock harbour of the island (owned by the National Trust, which has forbidden overnight stays) fits two 16ft wooden vessels as if it had been carved out especially for them.

If your crew aren’t keen, then you can always nominate a crewmember as Fletcher Christian and re-enact Mutiny on the Bounty.

27. Head to the Continent

Do it! In the 1950s, a Ford Corsair took Ken Duxbury’s dinghy on a towing trailer to the European mainland.

There were no phone apps to sort him out. Duxbury and his wife had to get their bank manager to “make arrangements to secure cash withdrawals at six selected towns in Greece and Italy”…

“The manager nearly came with us,” Duxbury admits.

28. Go coastal

A jaunt to the lighthouse in fine weather need not turn into the horror show of the catboat Tina’s Joy in the ridiculous Jaws 2.

But bear in mind how quickly waves can build at sea, and whether you can cope with capsize and righting, perhaps alone if your crew is incapacitated.

Roger Barnes is best placed to speak of the joys of cruising his own dinghy around Brittany.

For him, “meandering between the delightful havens and offshore islands of the Baie de Quiberon” were “days of utter uncomplicated contentment. Only those who have experienced it know the true delight of cruising in a small dinghy.”

In North America, such routes are coming to be called ‘water trails’ and are designed for Canadian canoes that take a small mast and outrigger.

Close inshore cruisers in the UK need to be aware that firing ranges are often located right off the beach.

Patrol boats will ward you off and call you up on VHF radio if you stray…

29. Open water

Wayfarers cruising to Lundy Island come to mind here. It’s something for a long summer day, but some would see it as extreme.

Do you really want to go out of sight of land? Factors for large vessels come into play here.

Crew fatigue is something to bear in mind. Stamina for a long day out needs extending if the day gets longer than intended.

Think about your boat’s ability to steer through waves. Be aware of weather helm, and whether reefing will even be possible in a squall.

Where is your escape route to shore? What are your tactics for staying ahead of the problems? Do you need wetsuits? Handwarmers? Heated cushions?

30. Epic voyage

Not for the beginner or even the expert, but a trip of hundreds of miles does count as dinghy cruising.

Whether it’s mostly coastal hopping like Sandy Mackinnon in Jack De Crow, or cruising open ocean like Frank and Margaret Dye, high adventure is guaranteed.

Epic missions these days are also certain to raise serious money for charity (eg the Wayfarer Hafren round Britain).

Going to Iceland, going to Norway, going to Greece is extreme, but makes for fantastic tales.

One of my favourites is Ken Duxbury, returning to Weymouth after crossing the Channel, flying his yellow flag for the attention of Customs.

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