- in which the new President finds himself in familiar waters at an unfamiliar time of year, and waxes philosophical about the moral superiority of dinghy cruising.

Unless she is brand new, the maintenance of even the smallest wooden boat is never finished. The varnish is always dropping off somewhere, the wood underneath is turning black, and you feel guilty that you're out sailing instead of sanding. That's the point of traditional boats of course. You have to care for them, not just fling them into a corner and forget about them.

Trouble is, the maintenance has to be done at some point, and inevitably it tends to be in winter, when it seems too cold and wet to go sailing. Unfortunately it's also too cold and wet for varnishing, and inevitably the first flush of spring has already passed before she's back on the water with her new varnish glinting in the sun. Then she feels the breeze and the spray lashes across the weather bow, depositing the salt that will inexorably break down the coating once more. Like the ebb and flow of the tides, the rising and setting of the sun, you put varnish on a boat only so that it can fall off again.

This spring however, Baggywrinkle had to be all ready by the end of February, to appear on the DCA stand at the RYA Dinghy Show. So when her weekend of glory at Crystal Palace had passed, I found myself with the whole of March before me and a boat that was ready for the sea. Meanwhile strange things were happening in the firmament. A comet flashed across the heavens and for weeks on end the sun shone from a bright blue sky. There was only one thing to do: I went sailing.

Years ago, when I lived in Oxford, I often used to sail on the Solent, but I never got to like it much The drive down through Newbury and around Winchester was always such a trial, and then when you got there you could hardly see the water for yachts motoring about with only their jibs up. I always reckon that you meet the nicest sailors in drying harbours. There is nothing like spending half the time sitting in glutinous mud to give you a civilised perspective on life. The Solent, on the other hand, is the natural habitat of Marina Man, and the place crawls with posers in ostentatious yachts. But let's not be bigoted about the place. Perhaps it was time to give it another chance.

So there I was at Buckler's Hard, on the 16th of March for heaven's sake, with my Tideway all loaded up for a night away. It was already lunch time, and the flood tide was filling the creeks beside the main channel, as we slipped away from the two lines of mellow brick houses. Usually the Beaulieu River is an unbroken line of moored boats, but this early in the year most of the moorings were unoccupied, and Baggywrinkle gurgled down the empty river in the mellow winter sunshine, a light northerly breeze blowing the creases out of her sails.

The Beaulieu River runs parallel to the Solent for a mile or two, its navigation channel separated from the open water by a shingle spit. A solitary yacht was also making use of the beam wind to carry her over the tide. But out in the Solent the tide was setting in the opposite direction, so I showed her the superiority of little dinghies. I lifted Baggy's centreplate and we slipped away from her across the shallows, into the fair tide in the open water beyond.

The sail over to the Isle of Wight and then along its northern coastline to Wootton Creek was wonderful. The wind and tide were fair, the sun shone out of a cloudless sky and the water was deserted, apart from the odd container ship bound on business up Southampton Water. We pottered about Wootton Creek for a while in the evening sun, and then caught the young ebb back to King's Creek for the night. King's Creek is lovely, but it suffers from a pox of private signs. One bank has quite normal ones, but the other is emblazoned with signs saying "Private, No Landing SSSI". The fellow is probably just trying it on of course. A Site of Special Scientific Interest is not the same as a Nature Reserve, and does not mean that access is restricted. I would have been quite within my rights to land on either bank below the high water mark. I felt very much like doing so, and bounding about on the foreshore and generally making myself at home, just to make the point. But it was getting dark, so I contented myself with muttering "Property is Theft", and snuggled down for the night under the boat tent, listening to the sea birds crying over the lonely saltings.

I was up early on the Sunday and underway by 0600 hours, sculling her over the stern out of the little creek. It was a flat calm on the Solent, but I had a fair tide to the west until nearly 10.00 hours, so I settled down to rowing towards Cowes. Soon however the first zephyrs rippled across the oily water and we were able to start sailing. The watery sun slowly dispersed the morning mist and warmed my cold toes, as we tacked along the north coast of the Island.

The passage to Newtown took us three and a half hours, and in that time I saw only two other yachts enjoying the perfect sailing conditions. Baggywrinkle crept in through the narrow entrance of the creek against the ebb, and only just managed to get up to the little quay before the channel dried out. I waded ashore through the mud with the kedge anchor and dug it well in, before climbing up onto the quayside. Then I stood there and looked back over the intricate pattern of water, mud and saltmarsh. If it had not been for the mooring buoys, already laid for the new season, this could have been a remote inlet in the far North, not part of the busiest stretch of water on the South Coast. On that peaceful winter's morning I realised why this place is so beloved by local yachtsmen

It would be hours before Baggy would float off again. A rickety gang plank ran from the lonely quay for some five hundred yards across the saltings, leading to the village, dozing in the sunshine. I walked across it and found a flock of four-horned Hebridean sheep peacefully grazing behind the little town hall, their new born lambs wobbling on uncertain legs. I ate my lunch back at the quay, basking in the sun and looking out over the empty creek with Baggywrinkle lying delightfully in the foreground. If the trees had not been bare of leaves, it could have been summer.

It is a wonder to me that the sea is still free to those of us who sail and camp in little boats. We can wander and explore at will, setting up our tents in the most beautiful and remote places. But few people have discovered the delights of dinghy cruising. In all my years of coastal exploration I have only once met someone else cruising in a dinghy, except at rallies. People underestimate the ability of dinghies to make passages - to be used for actually getting somewhere, however modest the distance - rather than simply pottering about or racing. They feel that you need a proper yacht to go cruising. Admittedly large yachts are fine things: I charter them occasionally and their ability to keep the sea in conditions which send a dinghy scurrying to shelter, the way they can punch their way to powerfully to windward through a steep sea, are a marvel. But I miss the handiness of my little twelve footer, her ability to dive across the shallows, and root around the remote channels in the salt marshes that the large yachts never see. Most of all I like the modesty and simplicity of dinghy cruising. So many yachts on the Solent never leave their marinas, and are used only for floating drinks parties - because a yacht shows that you have made it. There is nothing showy or ostentatious about cruising in a dinghy, though. Invariably everything gets covered in mud, and it's no use trying to dress smartly as your clothes just get salt stained. Dinghy cruising is honest yachting, devoid of all pretentiousness. When they look down on us from their big yachts, that cost more to keep each year than our boats cost to buy, they probably cannot understand why we do it. But we know that one of the sure ways to contentment in this life is a small, simple boat, a fair wind and a new coast to explore.