Sometimes you search high and low for useful bits of gear for a cruising dinghy and then, quite unexpectedly, you come across them in the most unlikely places. Take my recent visit to Marks and Spencer’s for example.

Over the years, one job I've hated is filling the hurricane lamp with paraffin. It always seems to need doing after a long and weary passage when you're cold, thirsty and tired, and in the gathering gloom it isn't easy. To some extent I solved the problem by carrying my paraffin in an old loo cleaning bottle - the ones with the swan neck. At least you can shoot the oil straight into the reservoir. But nothing tells you when it's full, and you always seem to get some oil on the cockpit floor no matter how careful you are. Why can't they make these things to hold a candle, I've often wondered.

Well, now they have. You'll find them in M & S at £12. They're much prettied up, as you might expect, but instead of oil, you lift the glass globe in the usual way and pop in a candle. The ones supplied only last for about 4 hours, which might be all right for a summer's evening, but there are larger ones to be had in ironmongers, guaranteed to last for 8 hours.

Then, in either the Bettawear or the Kleeneezee catalogue, you'll find the handiest little torch. The body is about 5" long and contains two AA batteries and the head had a powerful halogen bulb at the end of a 4" flexible tube. The body of the torch has a spring clip, enabling you to attach it almost anywhere. The price, as I remember it was between £3 and £5. Well worth keeping a lookout for.