It was interesting, and rather nostalgic, to read in the Autumn '76 bulletin those two reprinted reviews of attempts to design small centreboarders specifically for cruising. Despite all the thought that went into their conception and design, neither of those two, the Midshipman and the Tricorn, were exactly bestsellers. Who, in fact, would remember them now without the reminder of those reprints?

The two reviews were particularly interesting after reading our Editor's admirably reasoned reply to Anthony Siggery's account of how he went from a 15ft dayboat to a big ship with a lid on (I had the impression that the author was rather uncertain of the wisdom of the switch, and as for his claim that "it's a trifle up on the dinghy", the gentleman doth protest too much, methinks.) I agree with her that cuddies and mini-cabins are not essential for turning a good open boat into a good camping cruiser.

The plain open or half-decked boat has a versatility which the "specially designed" cruising dinghy has to sacrifice. Why should a dinghy have to carry his cramped quarters around with it? Think of all the lovely moving-about and lolling space you lose, to say nothing of the extra weight which the fixture makes. A tent rigged on the boom is a fine and private overnight home and, if sensibly made, amazingly snug in the bargain. And when the time comes for moving on you roll it up in a bundle and the boat is cleared for action.

Of course, some dinghies make better cruising boats than others. But cruising dinghies, as the more experienced and far-ranging D.C.A. members have proved over the years, are what you make them. You tailor a dinghy to your temperament, the size of your family, you aesthetic sense, or even the horsepower of your car. But heaven forbid having to tailor it around a cramped cabin which is too small when you're in it and forever in the way when you're not. There is no such thing as an "ideal" cruising dinghy - and there are several hundred "ideal" dinghies to prove it! We in the D.C.A. need reminding from time to time how lucky we are to be able to follow our sport according to our own ideas. With a dinghy, for example, you can follow the trend and set up two masts instead of one, go in for gaff rig, sport a bowsprit, whatever you like, if you're prepared to mortgage your pocket money for a week or two. How many of us could even contemplate such harmless fun aboard a proper yacht?

The nearest thing to perfection in a cruising dinghy that I've come across is my beloved Tideway, which I hope still to be cherishing when I'm too stiff in the joints really to be sailing at all. I'm ready to accept that others might have other ideas. Leastways, I wouldn't ever argue with them. I bought my Tideway because I saw one sailing and she stole my heart with her prettiness. Pros and cons of how "ideal" she would be as a cruising dinghy (she proved her ability splendidly in due course) hardly came into it.

Which brings me to the notion I first thought of before getting set to leeward by this lengthy preamble. It's this. There must be many D.C.A. members who have evolved successful cruising boats out of whatever boat was available. Getting the best out of a boat is like a happy marriage. It takes time and you have to work at it. And whoever chose a good wife because she fitted into any cold-blooded specification drawn up beforehand?

In the hope that it might encourage others to share their memories of their early cruising days in the most unlikely of craft, I'll confess that I started cruising in a Snipe dinghy. I offer a friendly challenge to any member to think of a boat less ideal for the job than that. But she was a loyal boat that one. A character, a stout companion, disastrously wet, monstrously heavy, with a cockpit the size of a Kipper box, and she weighed slightly less than a ton.

The mast hollow spruce) had a fiendish refinement whereby it was not set up with shroud lanyards or rigging screws as aboard any sane boat, but with a screw jack device at the foot of the mast. When the mast was stepped and the shackles made on to the chainplates, one had to crawl under the foredeck, where there was about a foot clearance between the deck beams and the bottom frames, and screw up the jack with a tommy bar to set the shrouds to the required tension. Oh, those expeditions under the foredeck. Crawling on your back to retrieve any bits of cruising gear which had gone too far under - usually they floated up there, because with her low freeboard she shipped enough spray within half an hour of a brisk beat to submerge the bottom-boards - was like being Tom in "The Water Babies" but without the soot.

For months, until a kindly adult friend explained that a dose of linseed oil on the thread would bind it and prevent it from working loose, I had to make that beastly journey when the jack unscrewed itself with the movement of the mast when the going was brisk. One day it happened off Horse Sand Fort in Spithead, with a shipmate at the helm, we had left it a bit late clearing Langstone and the tide was beginning to run nastily to weather and Wootton Creek seemed very far away. Under the foredeck, cheek to cheek with the gurgling bilge water, half stifled in clammy oilskins, I was miserably sick. And had to lay on my back all the while because there wasn't headroom enough to turn. I had more fear and more delight from that boat than any other and I sold her with a pang.

The freeboard of the transom was about eight inches or something ridiculous. I clamped a small piece of one-inch ply on this to take a Seagull. But unless the sea was tranquil, even the smallest of waves would reach up dangerously close to the air intake. Coming in through Hurst Channel one nightfall, skimming the shoals off Hurst to cheat the tide, inching forward to make Keyhaven before dark, a passing pilot cutter's wash sent her rolling. I looked astern and watched with fascinated horror as the stern settled in a trough and the Seagull's carburettor was momentarily submerged by a rogue lop. Thoughts race through your mind at times like that, like deciding to dash forward to get the anchor down to avoid the unattractive prospect of being set down by the tide on to the Shingles, or drifting helpless and unlit through the busy Needles Channel.

But there was no need. The Seagull coughed sullenly, missed a couple of beats and resumed its purr. The fact that I've never used an engine in any boat since the Snipe does not, therefore, imply any reservations about their sturdy qualities. I only used it aboard the Snipe because, with the centreplate projecting three inches above the deck when raised, and with nowhere suitable to sit below gunwale level, she just could not be rowed.

I would like to think that making the best of an unsuitable boat taught me lessons worth learning, more vividly than any "ideal" boat could. Does anybody with similar experience share this view?