A ‘15ft traditional clinker dayboat’ sounds so ideal that one reads with surprise of how Anthony Siggery was persuaded to buy a cabin boat instead.

‘Something with a roof on’, yes, there are temptations there. A tent does nearly all that a cabin will, but I cannot deny that I have slept very peacefully while deluges of thunderous rain ran over the plywood deck over me, and less peacefully while the same conditions tried my tent to its limits; but a good tent should still do the job.

Real advantages of permanent cover are two; it is easier for the one off watch to sleep and even cook on long passages, and it provides lockable storage space for a boat left on its moorings. There really are some advantages in a cuddy raised high enough to sit in and covering about six feet from the bow. In a cabin boat this is enlarged so that it affects the sailing performance, makes rowing extremely difficult in most designs, and also makes the cockpit a limited space, too small to sleep in, so that one has less room for extra members of the family than in an open boat. There is only the cabin or living space, and the tent over even a twelve foot dinghy is much roomier. Worse still, the current trend is for a shallow ‘self draining’ cockpit, cut off by an awkward hatch from a deep dark cabin in which crew members are shut away from the open air.

To continue the comments on ‘Owning Thee’: no longer can the boat be handled at all times by its owner — well, at any rate, it cannot be beached and launched single-handed, though most boats seem practicable for single handed sailing. But performance in constricted waters is certainly clumsier, and in a boat of some two feet or more draught many creeks and anchorages are closed. This aspect hardly needs stressing.

Neither does the problem of maintenance and dependence on expensive yards.

Anthony Siggery notes the stability of the boat under way, and ease of performing jobs like sail changing and handling the anchor without having to hurry. Things are certainly slowed down in a heavier boat. I remember steering a Thames barge and waiting several minutes for her to respond to the helm! But on the other hand I don’t think I’d feel particularly safe wandering about on the turtle backed decks of most 25 footers: one sees why they insist on stanchions and pulpits. They usually sail at horrible angles of heel too, not like a sensible upright open boat. Yet the contrast between a heavy dinghy and, say, a GP must be just as great as that between the heavy dinghy and the keel boat. Surely the fifteen foot dinghy can be hove to, and can be sailed without acrobatics? At any rate, if not over canvassed.

I suppose this is a matter of preference. What Anthony Siggery does not go on to tell us is what he actually did with the keel boat which he could not have achieved with the 15 footer. If one has time, and a crew, for extended cross channel cruises, then one can more confidently plan these in the bigger boat; but I wonder if that is what he has since done?