A well-known book on dinghy cruising by the designer of the Morag states that “No boat has been more specifically designed for cruising.” This goes to show either that there’s no accounting for my peculiar tastes, or that this designer has done most of his cruising by Morag at the drawing-board, for when I came to make mine into my ideal single-handed cruiser, there were many changes.

Basically, the hull is good: a sturdy clinker boat, fifteen foot by six foot two, with a beamy transom, so that it is worth the trouble to get the rest right. This is just the maximum size I wish to row singlehanded, or to trail, and the minimum in which I feel happy at sea on anything of a crossing.

There is a good foredeck, but no other decking. The inwales made it easy to fit four-inch wide ply side-decks, and the strangely concave top to the transom had to be filled in with bits of wood glued and screwed, so that I could add a nine-inch wide stern deck. The mainsheet blocks were quite easily refitted through the deck.

There is now the minimum of dry stowage in handy places, where there was not before. There is also a chart-holder, two boards fixed to the side-deck, which disguise the place where my sawing was rather rough. The stern seat was extended to the transom to make a roomy shelf under the dry deck.

To row steadily, to heave-to reliably, and to rig the boat with a mizzen as I planned, I thought I would need a skeg. The rockered keel is a pretty shape, but I could see disadvantages. So I added a simple straight skeg, three inches deep at the stern, bolted in three places. This proved too much — the boat would not come about — so I sawed off the corner up to the aftermost bolt. This seems about right.

I thought I would try to follow Eric Coleman’s ideas in Roamer, and place buoyancy and ballast to make the boat more or less self-righting — although in practice I don’t believe I would ever capsize her, and I have not yet found the conditions for trying out what would happen if I did. Buoyancy bags are tucked under the stern deck, extending along the side- benches, 100 lb each side. There is an inflated inner tube tied up under the foredeck right forward: buoyancy high up in the ends. Also under the foredeck is an inflated boat-roller about 100 lb buoyancy, but I have now put this under instead of over my bunk, for comfort. There are other buoyancy bags in more conventional places amounting to another 300 lb, and the part-inflated toy dinghy is fixed as buoyancy while sailing at sea.

Ballast started off as 150 lb plus the forty-pound plate — two 20 lb garage-door counter-weights, and the rest in water, ½ gallon plastic lemonade bottles, tucked in with shock cord on both sides of the CB case. This ballast certainly does have a considerable effect. When I sail without it with a crew, we sometimes have to sit the boat up. Sitting-up is a thing I never have to think about on my own with ballast, and the boat carries her way well in rough water. I also have a useful water supply. Last year I decided to leave out the iron weights, which could not have been doing the boat much good, resting on the garboards, and the 100 lb of water ballast seemed quite adequate. There are also the tool-box, twenty pounds, and the food box, about thirty pounds, fixed centrally.

The rig is gunter. The true allegiance of the designer is probably indicated by the fact that he later designed a Bermudan version. Certainly little thought seems to have gone into the arrangements for the gunter mainsail. My reasons for preferring gunter to Bermudan are not only that the mast is shorter, but that there is no track, no need to feed in the luff, easy hoisting and instant reduction in sail area by releasing the throat halliard. As designed, the boat had a ten-foot gaff with no provision for alternative halliard positions, and it had a mast-track. There was the usual business of handling the yard while lowering or hoisting sail which seems to put off so many people who think it is an inevitable feature of the gunter rig. A gunter yard should have a wire span to which the peak halliard is attached on a running shackle. The span is long enough for the peak to be hoisted fully while the foot of the yard still rests on the boom. The throat halliard can then be set up, and can as easily be let go to give an instant reef. A reefing line rove permanently through a trumpet cleat on the boom secures the reef, and the bunt of the sail is easily caught up on hooks along the boom with loops formed from the tied-together reef-points. Twin topping lifts make sure that the peak is easy to lower.

I made a new yard thirteen feet long, with a line and parrels at the throat instead of the clumsy jaws of the original. The mast track I removed: it was not needed with the shorter luff.

I used the original yard to make a mizzen mast. I had always wanted to experiment with yawl rig, and the mainsail of the Morag seemed on the small side, so that some extra sail area low down would be a good idea. The rake of the transom is sufficient for the boom to clear the mizzen mast, which is hung outboard to one side of the rudder. It passes through a bracket made from the laminated fabric brackets they sell at Foulkes’s, and the foot has a gudgeon which goes onto a pintle — ordinary dinghy rudder fittings. A bumkin holds the sail out, the sheet from the light boom running through a block on the bumkin end and through a jam cleat where it can be easily adjusted, though usually it looks after itself. The bumkin is kept in place by two shock cords on the stern deck. It was made from the broken-off blade end of a fifteen foot sweep I used to have. The inboard end is flat on the deck, and it does not interfere with the tiller.

I have contrived a roller reefing jib by enclosing the luff wire in plastic tubing with a swivel at the head and a roller at the foot. It furls and sets easily while sailing, and remains clear of the forestay.

As in so many dinghies, there was plenty of space but nowhere to put anything. I made drawers under the side bunches out of oblong washing-up bowls, to hold torches, first-aid items, the day’s picnic rations, and cold weather extras like gloves and a balaclava. A fourth bowl, not fixed as a drawer, holds spare rope and line. Under the stern seat are four cider bottles in socks containing paraffin. Tins of paint also live down there. On top of the stern seat under the deck is my P11 compass in its box and a plastic bag with pilot books and log. Under the foredeck are food, plastic bags with spare clothing (one tucked in the centre of the inner tube ring), sleeping bags, blankets (in plastic bags). A little cupboard lashed high up to starboard contains cups, plates and pans. To port is my bunk — a root berth, a strip of industrial nylon laced along the stringer with a six-foot length of wood in the outer ham, one end tied to a stringer right forward, the other bolted by a wing nut to a short length of wood for a leg. A cord hitches this to a hook on the CB case while the bunk is in use, or it can be stowed against the gunwale during the day.

When I bought the boat there was a sleeping platform to keep one out of the bilge. I dismantled this, but I use the planks as a raised floor. They can be placed between thwart and stern seat to form a second berth, and a third if desired. Other floor boards double as padlocked barriers across forepeak and stern to discourage pilferers when the boat is left on moorings.

The galley is just abaft my bunk, forward of the thwart. It is a specially made box containing primus, meths and tea-making equipment, and has accompanied me on various boats for thirty-five years.

The nylon tent was originally made for my Tideway, extended to fit Hronrad. When sailing it is stowed in shock cord along the edge of the foredeck aft of the mast. It ties under the boom, which is secured on crutches. Curtain-rail plastic hoops are sewn into the transverse seams. A lacing fastens the forward opening on the foredeck, with the forward end tied to the mooring cleat. To help keep the awkward forward opening from letting in wind and rain, there is a spray hood always in place, and as an extra a reinforced plastic cover with its opening to one side of the mast can be set over all in bad weather. Tent and plastic cover have elastic loops to fit onto hooks under the rubbing strake.

One reason for selling my eighteen-footer was to be quit of engines, so an essential item is a nine foot pair of oars, stowed along the side-decks and tucked into the shock cord which holds the tent. Another Foulkes bracket makes a sculling rowlock fitting on the transom.

Add three anchors and warps, two buckets, dinghy paddles, sounding rod, charts, etc. etc. and one wonders where on earth they put things in those plastic tubs they sell at the Boat Show. My son refuses to sail in the mess I have (as usual) made of my boat.