Les Gill once said 'getting ashore is my only objection to dinghy cruising". As a novice one of the first things I learned was that Les was right. I also learned quickly that as I loaded my stores for the cruise my buoyancy became inadequate. I am nervous enough to demand some safety and old enough to carry equipment for comfort. I was faced with two problems, where can I stow all the air bags I wanted, and how could I get ashore?

The possibility of two rigid buoyancy tanks which would fit under the side decks and be joined into a rowable catamaran was given much thought, but I could find no way of making the tanks or joining them together without carrying a lot of pieces. Finally I decided to build a coracle in two halves, one half smaller than the other so it would fit inside the larger half. The nested halves were designed so that, upside down, they would stow between the mast and the centre thwart, filling that half of the cockpit. The smaller half of the coracle was to be fitted with four hundred pounds of buoyancy, a valuable addition to a learner determined to keep his name out of the paper.

I set to work with one sheet of ply eight feet by four feet, some mahogany, and screws. Three weeks later I started a cruise with a coracle that leaked, had no means of propulsion except a paddle, and did not fit properly into the parent ship, but my crew and I enjoyed a pint ashore each evening. Since then the coracle has been given a pair of oars, provision for stowing it aboard has been perfected and I would not cruise without it, if only to listen to the comments it gets while lying on the beach; "It's a boat - no it isn’t - it is - well you wouldn't get me in it".

When stowed it makes my fourteen footer look like a cabined boat, providing no one is aboard to spoil the proportions. Sheeted down with a canvas cover extending over the side deck it waterproofs the forward half of my boat and provides dry stowage for anything that will pass under the centre thwart.

Like most good things the coracle brought its problems. I must now go onto the deck to remove the fore sail, this I suppose I can avoid by fitting a roller gear when I can afford one. All my halliards are belaid at the bottom of the mast just below deck level; it is easy to reach over the upside down half coracle but not as easy to secure the halliards as in an open cockpit. The necessity to carry extra oars has been overcome by not carrying the dinghy oars. I find the short oars will move the dinghy at a pinch and I now have a Seagull.

The coracle must be floated to make the dinghy comfortable for sleeping, this is no trouble except on a confined mooring and then I tie it alongside with the aid of a fender. Although sitting on the centre thwart with the coracle as a back rest is quite comfortable, there is not sufficient room to lean back on the oars making serious rowing impossible with the coracle stowed.

Lowering the coracle single-handed is simple. The drill is slide the nested halves over the side, after the painter has been made fast. When the two fixing bolts have been removed the nested half can be lifted out of its floating shell, launched, and brought end to end, or should I say middle to middle, and screwed into a five foot coracle by two brass wing nuts and bolts, taking care not to drop the bolts, or letting go the half without a painter. My coracle is about ten inches deep. Upside down and supported at thwart level her bottom shows a few inches above deck level. As a coracle it leaves enough freeboard with two adults and the shopping on board, but it is a squeeze and I admit that when my nine year old son makes his solo inspection of the harbour the coracle looks happier than when it has four ugly knees tangled amidships.

So important has this coracle become to my equipment that when I looked out across the Hamble one grey dawn to find it had broken adrift in the night I was at a loss to know how the rest of the cruise was possible. By noon I had learned that she had bobbed between the moorings before the gale that swept the river that night, by the light of the moon had crossed the fairway, floated over the slatings on the top of a Spring tide and sat herself comfortably among the beach combings, undamaged and the right way up.

When I can afford to have a dinghy specially built for cruising the forward cockpit will be shaped to suit and the order include one set of coracle halves. Until then I treasure my little plywood box which is now marked D.C.A., just in case she should try another midnight adventure.