The four dinghies were rafted together in the saltings creek. George was having a brew up. 'Pass your cup.' he said. My cup! My cup, now where was it? My mind was scanning all the bags and containers tucked deep inside the buoyancy tanks. My cup was with my pans, plate, breadboard and washing up bowl, all fastened together... I remembered…. in my loft at home.

George was pretty good when I explained. He found me a spare cup and asked me if I wanted helping out with the pan problem, for the pan, not the cup was the biggest difficulty to crack. After some thought, I declined his offer because I had decided to experiment with a solution that I had previously thought about. It doesn't take a genius to conceive of the idea of using a tin can to replace a pan, but how will it work out in practice?

Fortunately for me I had decided to have a canned meal that evening, something that I don't always do. And so it was, that I stripped the label off a tin of Beef Stew with Dumplings and put it on the gas stove to heat up. It was quite a tall shape and maybe not quite as stable as I would have liked, so to steady it I tore a strip of material from a thick absorbent kitchen cloth that I usually use for drying the inside of the boat after sailing. When folded to increase its thickness it allowed me to hold the can near to it's top whilst I tried to stir the contents a bit. The pan-can succeeded without coming unstuck. The stew was a little burned around the outer edges at the bottom of the can where it was difficult to stir with the spoon and where the heat transfer was probably the greatest through the very thin material.

Next along was a tin of Rice Pudding, which I like equally hot or cold so there was no problem. Washing from a can was too difficult, but a Tupperware storage container box served well for the can-heated water. Wet shaving from a can was absolutely perfect as a small amount of water gave a good depth for rinsing the blade. I began to see that far from being a problem, using cans had its advantages.

My two cans together weigh 100 grams. My two quite small and light pans weigh 750 grams. Dispensing with a separate plastic bowl saves another 225 grams. 875 grams of weight saving is an important consideration to some people, more than two full large tins of beans. Probably the biggest problem was the handle. It would have been nice to have had something resembling a mug type handle which locked onto the side of the can. I have since used a conventional tin-opener which locks onto the upper rim and projects in a similar way to a pan handle.

So there we have it. For one person the pan-can is not only a viable solution it has been found in practice to have a couple of distinct advantages. All that it needed is for some bright person to design the right kind of clip-on handle and we could see the Mugpancan finding acceptance in the galleys of the lightweight dinghy cruiser and backpackers.)