"Oh Lord, have mercy Thy sea is so large And my ship is so small"

And of all the well known boats used for dinghy cruising, the 10'10" Mirror must be one of the smallest. But its LOA is a little misleading. If you carried the shape forward from the pram bow, keeping the same LWL, to a conventional bow, the LOA would be about 12'.

Some criticise the pram bow saying it stops the boat dead in a head sea. I'm sure they are right sometimes but usually the waves are from the same direction as the wind, so as you're sailing, at an angle to the wind it's the edge of the bow that is cutting into the waves and not the sloping face.

The rather angular hull shape is as good as you'll get with a hard chine and perhaps better than most of the type. As boat designers say, "If it looks right, it is right" and when I see my Mirror lying at anchor, tossing her bow to stray wavelets, I know she is right.

When stripped she's a light boat, which is important to the single-handed sailor who can never be sure where he will have to run to for shelter. Loaded with a week’s cruising gear the weight is doubled to over 250 lbs, but I see to it that the extra weight goes where it will do the most good.

I like the fact that it is built of old fashioned wood, although with the amount of glass-fibre tape and resin holding the wood together, the Mirror owner is not in a position to sneer at "plastic bathtubs"; however, he might just softly quote:

“If God intended man to sail glass fibre boat, He’d have made glass fibre tree to float.”

For extended coastal cruising, especially when single-handed because of the limited space, there are several modifications which are helpful. Soon after buying a Mirror in early 1974, 1 wrote to most of the many Mirror owners in the D.C.A. and asked what changes they had done to improve their boats for cruising. The replies gave me a wealth of information and opinion and so a summary was published in the Winter bulletin of 1974/75. Since then I've done a modification or two each spring including some that no one mentioned. I would stress that these alterations were done to suit my desired use and usual sailing waters. For example I can always camp ashore, so a boom tent is unnecessary. I sail on a rocky shoreline and found the floor needed to be strengthened. I sail without crew, so simple easy to use mainsail reefing is helpful.

The biggest modification was to make and fit a lifting centreboard. Only did that this year and it proved very worthwhile. I adapted a 'Miracle' board and built a good strong case from 8 mm ply and parana pine. Screwed to a new cedar thwart and glued, screwed and then resin-taped to hull and mast step bulkhead. The new board is 8" deeper in the water than the old daggerboard, but narrower so the immersed area is only a little larger.

The standard ply floor was too weak for my needs. Every year I'd got at least one leaking crack from a rock, usually when loading or unloading at the shore. These cracks were always in the open floor area between the footrest and mast step bulkhead, never under the buoyancy tanks. 1’m told that in this situation Bell Woodworking recommend removal of interior rubbing strips and the footrest and then the fitting of two panels of 5 mm ply to the floor, one either side of the daggerboard case. Glued down, then resin taped around the edges to buoyancy tanks etc. No doubt this is the best method, but I'd already fitted additional rubbing strips inside and out to try and strengthen the floor. (Worthwhile, but they didn't fully prevent damage). I'd glued down the interior ones and didn't relish the idea of removing them. So I fitted 5 mm ply between the interior rubbing strips, glued in place and then a layer of glass fibre and resin over the lot. Messy smelly stuff, but useful.

The depth of the skeg has been increased by 1" and extended to the centreboard slot. Frankly I cannot say the difference is noticeable, but it must make Little Mischief slightly less eager to wander off course when I'm distracted by mermaids and such like.

A simple mainsail reefing system has been the greatest contribution to my peace of mind. Just a single slab reef up to a few inches below the lowest batten. Three reef points with the line of the points running down 12" to the reefing tack cringle. When reefed this raises up the end of the boom by 12" as I feel that if the occasion demands reefing, it's also the wrong time to have the boom thumping my head. At tack and clew reefing cringles, I've simply duplicated existing tack downhaul and clew outhaul/downhaul. When reefed I have a neat flat mainsail of about 32 square feet. (About 2/3 of full mainsail). Conditions have to be rather serious to lower the 20 square foot jib as well.

At first I had to lower the gaff into the cockpit to shift the halliard attachment point when putting in or shaking out the reef. Didn't like this as I tended to either disappear under the mainsail or lose it overboard. So I fitted an extra halliard. Both halliards run through the existing mast head slot over two dumb sheaves, fitted one above the other. There is enough space with practically no wood removal.

A simple and useful fitting is a boom topping lift. This light cord runs from a cleat at foot of the mast, through a small eye screwed on one side of the mast near the top, then down under the boom a couple of feet or so from the end, up the other side of the mainsail to end in a small shackle which clips into another eye opposite the first one. The boom topping lift is most useful when reefing, or when rowing to raise the boom out of the way and yet have the mainsail ready for use. It also traps the gaff when lowering sail and prevents it from waving about. Another simple rope is a jib downhaul to get my jib right down and out of wind and water.

The tiller attachment to the rudder head is a weakness in the Mirror; I avoided the obvious glueing together for some years. But eventually while on a cruise and near the end of a hard day of running in a strong wind I found a crack in the rudder head just as I was preparing to cross a difficult two mile channel to an offshore island, I lashed it up with rope and next day on the island I glued them together. Much better.

When riding waves on a shallow draft boat like the Mirror, there can be an unpleasant second or two while a wave is passing under when the tiller becomes very light to the touch. The rudder blade must be nearly out of the water, so I made a new rudder blade, about 6" deeper, but narrower so immersed area is about the same.

On the vertical side of the forward end of each side buoyancy tank I fitted a 6" diam. hatch with screw on cover and inside each tank a bulkhead sealed with tape and resin to give dry stowage space about 20" in length.

Inside painted white, one compartment as "bosun’s locker", the other for those items you need to keep handy but dry. Without the internal bulkheads some items might get lost down the tank. If I slept on board I'd probably fit similar compartments at the aft end of the side tanks as well. But most of my gear for an extended cruise is contained in large blue heavy duty plastic bags. (Normally used for I.C.I. fertilizer - I have friends in the right places.) These are held under thwart and to the centreboard case with shock cord and hooks. Two x 1 gallon water containers are jammed in low on the floor, while another two x 1 gallons fit in the forward open stowage compartments under the anchor, grapnel and warps.

Ideally most of my alterations could have been done most easily while building a new boat from a kit. Though there are those who argue that even if you don't race you shouldn't modify a boat to put it out of class. They seem to suggest that this would be close to sacrilege and anyway you'd lose resale value. This could well be true for most racing boats sailed in clubs or for a rare type of old dinghy, but the 60,000 Mirrors were designed for family day sailing with a particular appeal to the first time boat owner. So we have for example a daggerboard, (even if the Mirror advertising does insist on calling it a centreboard) not because it's better but to keep it simple and the costs low. If the design is not perfect for your needs, it cannot be sacrilege to improve it. And what Mirror owner doesn't improve his boat with new halliards, blocks, kicking strap, jib sheet jam cleats etc?

The suggestion that you'd lose money when you came to sell hardly applies to the Mirror, most of which are not sailed in clubs. The main secondhand market is the same as the "new" market, there must be plenty of willing buyers about who neither know nor care about class rules and measurements but can appreciate a well done improvement that will make their use of the boat a little safer.

And if you consider the modifications I've done, that has been their purpose. Not a faster boat, but safer. Anyway, I don't care about resale. Little Mischief and I will be together until our timbers rot.