The Dinghy Cruising Association – A Personal View
An inside look at the popular small-boat cruising club from the U.K.
by Keith Muscott
By this time next year I will have been editing and publishing Dinghy Cruising, the quarterly journal of the DCA, for twenty years. My wife Jennifer has run our website for three years or so. We both more or less fell into the jobs to fill vacuums that appeared at widely different times, after being members of the Association for years before that. What follows is a personal account of my early introduction to boats and sailing, and how the DCA began.
I’m grateful to Josh for inviting me to make a contribution to SCA, a magazine I’ve always respected for its full-on engagement with small boat sailors and their exploits. After all, it commissioned John Welsford to design the Scamp. What more can you say!
When I first heard of the Dinghy Cruising Association I was a little uneasy about the name. It seemed slightly creaky and Victorian, and I would have preferred “open boat” or “sail and oar” in there—but that wasn’t the only reason. Buried in my mind, the word ‘dinghy’ was a precise term that connected with my childhood in the English Lake District and the long shadow that had been cast over all of us kids back then by the aftermath of the Second World War. Then the mist cleared. My experience of fun on the water when I was very young came from a succession of cheap inflatable dinghies—all black rubber—that my father found in war surplus stores. Other kids’ dinghies from the same source seemed always to be larger and tougher than mine, but it was said (by me) that the small ones had been destined to accompany fighter pilots over the English Channel, deflated and tucked under their seats. This lent mine a distinct stage presence when I joined my pals on the lake, trying to growl like a V12 Rolls Royce Merlin aero engine while launching it. And failing miserably.
A few years after that I started my own cottage industry making fishing rods from whippy copper-coated tank aerials by soldering small open rod rings onto them. The aerials were steel and painted a sandy brown over the copper, and in practice the open rings caused line tangles on every second cast. Then I found that corks for rod handles were eye-wateringly expensive in those days of scarcity and the old man had already started asking questions about his dwindling stock of lead solder coils, so it could never have been a promising business start-up, even if the aerials had not vanished from the market as fast as they had appeared. I closed down the enterprise and fished with the only rod I’d completed.
One day, while working it around the lake to chase listless perch and indolent pike, I caught more than I'd bargained for. I saw my Uncle Bernard walking the shore as I was untangling yet another bird’s nest. He took the rod from my hands and said in a funny voice, “I know what this was before it became a rod.”
It was like turning a key and opening a door. Over the next hour he opened up about his experiences in the desert serving under Alexander and Montgomery, which culminated in the prolonged sequence of engagements in hell that was El-Alamein. He went into great detail about the bloodier encounters he’d faced, fighting alongside an armoured group while negotiating minefields, when he was certain his time had come, over and over again. Long after that he was invalided out with tuberculosis of the lungs.
At my age I should not have been listening to this lurid stuff. An Educational Psychologist listening in would have arranged an appointment to run tests and set up a short course of therapy for PTS, but in fact the child in question thought it was wonderful. Uncle Bernard’s stock rose dramatically in my eyes and I never looked at him again the same way. He retreated into himself and wandered off along the beach. Next time we met we were back to normal, with “Hiyah!” followed by his slow sad smile of recognition. But I made sure I lost the rod soon after and didn't fish again until I started to sail on the sea years later.
Then Gus Olsen appeared with his GP14 sailing dinghy. He was a friend of my father and had become a member of Bassenthwaite Lake Sailing Club after he’d built his “Jeep” at home from Jack Holt’s plans. “GP” stands for General Purpose, and it was—and still is – a sturdy family boat, well-behaved when driven by an outboard, capable of riding to a mooring and easily towed; but Jack could never prevent himself from drawing a slippery hull and it had a choice of rigs, one with a big genoa for racing.
To this day, wooden GPs win races as frequently as fibreglass ones, and the last national winner was a wooden boat that had been built at home. The big bell insignia on the mainsail is a reminder that Jack was assisted in designing it by the Dovey Yacht Club in Aberdyfi, a busy little estuary village by the River Dyfi on the southern edge of the Snowdonia National Park, not far down the coast from me in North Wales.
The river there runs into Cardigan Bay, where legend has it that the sunken lands and towns of an ancient cantref lie, and occasionally, on black and silent nights, you can hear the bells tolling faintly in one of its drowned churches. There is an old song The Bells of Aberdovey too, in Welsh and English.
Back to Bassenthwaite Lake. The Club raced GPs and Flying Fifteens, Uffa Fox’s beautiful design, and they still do. The Club was a bit stuffy and traditional back then and Gus liked to provoke other members by saying he was planning to fit trapeze wires to the mast so his crew could stand on the gunwale and hang out to windward when beating, just like the Australians did on their GPs in Sydney Harbour. They turned puce while telling him that the class rules didn’t allow it, and Gus would counter by saying it would at least demonstrate the exceptional durability of the boats.
Sailing with Gus when he wasn’t racing was a big attraction for me. As his Nordic name suggested, he loved telling me about the unusually peaceful Scandinavian settlers of the Cumbrian hills centuries earlier, who’d left their mark in the place names and the local family surnames, and in a lot of dialect words, too. I knew all this from local history lessons in school, but he was enjoying it, so I listened and nodded. I told him that the river running through the lake on its way to the sea was the Derwent, which was Celtic for “Oak,”not Norse, as were some of the best mountain names, like Blencathra, my favourite. The Celtic King Dunmail, the last of his ancient line, had left his mark on the landscape too—on Dunmail Raise, the name of a rising pass between mountains and also for the large cairn close by it. His father lost the great battle of Brunanburh in 937C—to the Saxon Athelstan, not the Vikings.
I asked him if he knew why the River Derwent left the lake under “Ouse Bridge,” not “Derwent Bridge” and he told me that “Ouse” was Old Norse for “outlet,” and it appeared in various places in northern Britain that had been under Viking domination, where rivers drained away from lakes or bigger rivers.
Sailing with Gus went a long way to disabuse me of the notion that real dinghies were small rubber boats, but the feeling lingered at times. I sense that it has also been an inappropriate name for Americans to use for open cruising boats, as they have reserved it more for small tenders. One of the nice things about The Dinghy Book by Stan Grayson, published way back in the late 1980s, is that he treated the boats as individuals with their own traits and personalities, and he spent time on the best sailing rigs for them, as well as evaluating their suitability as yacht tenders, as most of his readers saw them.
“Dinghy” comes from “dingi,” a Hindi word, which entered English by way of the Royal Navy in the very early 1800s when it replaced the “jolly boat” as a small maid of all work needing only a minimal crew that was easily launched from a warship to carry the captain or one of his officers around a harbour on official business, or on minor duties. The aitch was added early on to harden the ‘g’ and prevent the word being pronounced as dingy—“gloomy and drab”—which would have killed the neologism stone dead right away.
The Dinghy Book
I have to say that I would always take the first edition, a lovely big book, unless it was going in a backpack for the weekend. I have both at home.
Be that as it may, both are small boat compendiums of great range and detail. And I love his coverage of the Dyer Dhow, developed at first for stowing in the 9ft space on the decks of WWII PT Boats. It could accommodate five sailors...
The Dinghy Cruising Association was formed in 1955 as a spiritual home for sailors who were cruising in small boats off the South Coast of England but were reluctant to join the established sailing clubs as they all prioritised racing. It did not invent dinghy cruising. Venturing in small open boats had been widespread for years before then – right back to the canoe clubs of the 1800s, intensely popular in Britain and America, and even earlier. A new wave of post-war interest in 1940s England found its hero in a slightly built, unassuming family man who lived in Birdham village close to Itchenor in Chichester Harbour, which is a large and complex natural haven opposite the Isle of Wight that opens on to The Solent, the prime yachting area of the South Coast.
In November 1945, Allan G Earl brought out his book Dinghy Cruising. Peter Davies himself, of Peter Davies Ltd, had written to Allan and asked to publish his book. It was well received, with good reviews in The Yachtsman and Country Life. The second edition appeared barely two months after the first, in January 1946, then a third in October 1947. Kathleen Earl, Allan’s widow, wrote a letter after his early death due to Parkinson’s disease, in which she says that the book sold over 12,000 copies in that two-year period, and they received 10% of the cover price for each one sold (which amounted to 9 old pence out of 7 shillings and 6 pence. Ah, those were the days...)
Before he wrote it, Allan had cruised 4,000 miles in dinghies, mostly in his own 10-footer. He had made mistakes and now knew how to avoid them, and he had formed strong opinions on what makes a good design of dinghy for cruising, which he passes on in the book. His own boat was a traditionally built wooden ten-footer, voluminous enough for him to sleep down one side of the centreboard case under the thwart, with his kit spread down the other.
His style is sensible, clear and straight to the point: “For single-handed work the overall length of the boat should be between ten and thirteen feet; as a rough guide the length of the boat in feet should equal the weight of the crew in stones (units of 14 pounds). A light man should not have a large boat, as the seaworthiness of a dinghy depends greatly on the way the crew sit her up, and he will not have the weight to keep a large boat under control unless she is under-canvassed. It is also probable that he will not have the strength to pull her up a rough beach. Provided the centre thwart is not too low, it is possible for one man to sleep in a ten-foot dinghy… but it is a tight fit.” He recommended boats of twelve to fifteen feet overall for two-person crews, the size to be chosen to balance the degree of discomfort they could endure, and added, “It is obviously possible for a crew of two to use a boat larger than fifteen feet, but I consider that anything over this length is outside the realms of dinghies.”
In these days of water ballast and other refinements, his adamant statements do not sit well with us, but it was a simpler sailing world back then, and clear-cut advice that enabled new cruising sailors to make fail-safe decisions when choosing a boat and equipment was very welcome. I like to say that the DCA is a broad church, and that a wide range of boats is tolerated by us: each to his own. The boat that an applicant sails has never had a bearing on whether s/he is welcomed into our ranks. I do nurse private opinions, though, and I have doubts about vessels that can’t be rowed because of their size and shape. For instance, I have sailed and enjoyed B&B Boats’ early simple design the Bay River Skiff 17, which is now very much the poor relation of the B&B family, but I'm not sure about the others as 'cruising dinghies'. I really like the concept behind the Spindrift range, though.
Should you wish to learn more about the birth of the DCA, the story is on our website. How a sailor calling himself “Clubless” wrote to the Yachting Monthly in December 1952 to complain about the racing focus of the sailing clubs. He was answered by ‘Lonehand” who said that he liked the idea of an organization through which he could meet other enthusiasts, sail with them and exchange ideas on technical and safety matters. Then, after a few fits and starts and a lot of self-doubt, “Lonehand”—Eric Coleman, the first President of the DCA—pulled things together.
The first DCA sailing meeting took place on the weekend of July 30th–31st 1955, in the Medina River, Isle of Wight, based on the waterside Folly Inn. This is taken from the report written afterwards:
“The fine weather helped to make this first rally very successful… A.G. Earl, author of Dinghy Cruising, sailed over from Chichester in his ten-footer on Sunday morning and arrived about noon. He had to get back the same day, so could not wait for the rest of us to arrive, returning on the afternoon east-going tide. It was a pity we missed him as he has done more for dinghy cruising than anyone else and is regarded by many as the 'master', being responsible for introducing many to the sport through his book. E. G. Coleman arrived in his cruising dinghy in the afternoon and soon afterward three boats arrived from the Tudor Sailing Club…”
I think that Allan would have expected quite reasonably to meet most of the attenders of a weekend meeting at noon on Sunday! Perhaps the others – including Coleman – had not yet learned from his book how important it is to be conversant with the prevailing tide times when sailing on the sea! Kathleen Earl wrote in her letter that Eric Coleman made a special pilgrimage to visit Allan at home in Birdham to tell him that his book Dinghy Cruising had become his Bible; it is clear that many others shared the same faith. This probably also explains why it was a given for them to call their new club 'The Dinghy Cruising Association'.
So much for the history, but what about the Association now? The DCA journal Dinghy Cruising is a constant reminder of the wide variety of boats, ages and abilities of our members – but also of their very similar appetites for dinghies and sailing adventures of all kinds.
On the home page of our website are two sentences I coined: “The friendly club with a sense of adventure. For sailors and families who use boats for more than just racing.”
I think that still applies, and by bringing to you our members’ own reports in future pieces I hope you will understand the Association better and really enjoy the stories. —Keith Muscott •SCA•
Please tell us about your sailing club or group below and leave a link. —Eds
Great article, Keith.
I am reminded (by the bell on the sailboats) of a book I have had since childhood: The Swans of Ballycastle. It is magical to read of another bell near another bay!
I happen to sail an old GP14, a Series 1 built in 1964. In another year she will be 60 years old. It's always fun to see her ilk mentioned in a story, especially as Holt's little jeep is not well known in the US. I have used her for cruising and I am just thin enough to sleep down one side of the centreboard case and under the thwart, though turning over requires work and contortions not well suited to a good night's rest. No amount of losing weight will help that, my hips get in the way.