Although most dinghies are carried down to the water for sailing and out again afterwards, some lie at moorings throughout the season or even through the year. All may be well if the boat is secured in a seamanlike fashion. This involves a sound chain properly secured. If the chain be too short the boat’s nose will be held down and an unusually high tide and strong wind will swamp the boat. Nor must the chain be too long. Even if the ground tackle was placed with neighbouring boats and the swing of the tide in mind, remember also that your little boat will often be wind rode and the gleaming ten-tonner close by tide-rode. See to it that you cannot be blown across against him.

Your chain of ample scope may be considerably reduced in length if the boat is left to swing through a few weeks of tides. So include a good strong swivel in your chain near the bottom end. It is unlikely that a dinghy will ever drag its moorings but remember that a hefty fisherman may possibly hook on some day in your absence, so a weighty ‘dead man’ in the ground is not an extravagance.

When considering the size of chain remember how unbelievably rapid is the wear of chain, especially in a tidal estuary, with the incessant abrasion and oxidizing exposure. Scrutinize the links of any chain that has been in use for a couple of seasons and you will conclude that ¼“ is none too heavy. Your mooring buoy must “watch” properly. The pennant should be long enough for the buoy not to be held under at full or strongly sluicing tide. It should be strong enough to hold your boat on those hectic occasions when conditions, or mistakes, make getting the chain aboard difficult.

Fancy buoys are expensive, and in less affluent days were frequently stolen. The impecunious dinghy sailor need not be ashamed of a gallon oil can painted a vivid colour. Red and yellow seem to be more conspicuous than white when there is dazzle on the water. It cannot be too well bound about with a generous loop upstanding. If sailing is suspended for the winter the moorings must not be neglected. Some people of the estuary best known to the writer take them up at great labour and re-lay them next spring. Others just remove the buoy and pennant replacing them with a wooden billet wired to the chain. Then, it is hoped, the chain may lie through the winter, the wooden spar just keeping clear of the ground.

In the course of a pleasant excursion when the tide is out watching the winter birds of the estuary, a casual visit to the moorings is made. The knot and dunlin are left for a moment and the glasses focussed on the spot where the moorings lie. . . . they are just not there! How abruptly changes the scene! How suddenly chill feels that sneaking easterly breeze, and how gloomy the leaden sky! As quickly as the mud and shallows allow, steps are taken, to and fro, until all remembered shore marks and transit lines are in position, but no disrupting feature breaks the even pattern of wave ripples where you stand. Only the innumerable little footprints of the birds you were watching a few minutes ago. How to recover your moorings hibernating somewhere below?

As soon as possible a systematic search is organized. At low tide you go equipped with your recovery apparatus. This consists of these things — your carefully checked land marks, far and near, which give you lines of bearing at various angles (your anxieties will be reduced if the day is clear), half a dozen little rods, an old spade, an old hand saw, pliers, new billet and wire. It is quite likely that the elements, such as the ice of last winter, may have sheared the buoy away.

Having taken up your estimated position stick a rod in the ground on a line of transit a little to the front of you. Thrust your handsaw down into the mud and saw your way backwards along the line. Much quicker and deeper progress can be made this way than with probe, fork or spade. Do not immediately beam with delight if you encounter an obstruction. Patience, and alas, experience will help you to recognise the contact of pebble, mollusc, or foreign object. Last year the ice and frozen mud shifted things considerably. The writer after making a ‘good’ contact groped deep with his arm and found an ancient bicycle frame.

When your progress cuts across another bearing line, stop and put in another marking rod. You should be quite close. A cut along the second bearing line will intersect the first. The rods are important, for if you have to start again, a few inches wide of and parallel to the first attempt, you do not want to work the same line twice. It’s a grand feeling when your saw obviously comes up against billet or chain. You pause, then work the saw again to recognise the contact with certainty. The spade will now expose what you have been looking for, and the chain, with surprising resistance, is hauled out.

But victory may not yet be wholly yours. All unaware during this final and triumphant phase of the operations, your feet have most likely become embedded ankle deep in the increasingly liquid ooze. You may have not known that you must continually shift your stance whilst working. A length of chain may come out with a rush! After you have got up — a comic stage act this — looking and feeling quite different, rinse your hands in the nearest pool, for your pliers are in your pocket, and wire on the new buoy, if needed, with perhaps a bit more scope to keep it free. Your excellent panorama sketch of transit lines will be checked again. It may be torn and muddy by this time — it may temporarily have been whisked away from half frozen fumbling fingers. Make several copies of it when back home. If all’s correct, and no compass needed, gather up your spade, saw and rods; leave your chain piled upon itself and thankfully depart. Let’s hope the banks and gutters will give you some respite awhile.