For those of you who thought the pictures of a whale crashing onto a yacht off South Africa was a hoax (has photoshop made us all cynical?) watch the video. Believe the story now?

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For an exhilarating sailing experience which is easy to begin and full of fun, there is no better way to enter the sport than with dinghy sailing.

Where to Start

You’ll find many dinghy sailing clubs around the lakes and rivers of the UK coast. Always keen to take on new members, especially families, you’ll find them welcoming and friendly.

Cost

Fees vary depending on the level of facilities, but a good club will cost around £150 per year for a family and may include a dinghy parking place. Individuals joining on their own will expect to pay around £50 per year. There are no fees to use the water but you will need insurance. This should cost a further £50.

Equipment

There are two vital pieces of equipment that you will need. A buoyancy aid or life jacket and a pair of non-slip shoes. Trainers are fine to begin with but they offer no protection from the water. You’ll also need to invest in a good waterproof jacket in the summer and a wetsuit for the winter months. Wearing layers of clothing is always advisable.

Buying a Dinghy

Some clubs will lend you a boat and a sailing centre will provide a boat as part of a course. It’s a good idea not to rush in and buy a dinghy straight away. It’s best to start with a used dinghy while you’re new to sailing. Beginners to the sport will normally start with an older boat and after a few months, when you’re sure you want to continue, you can upgrade to something to a newer boat.

Types of Dinghy

- Car portable such as Toppers. – Fixed keel dinghies. – Performance dinghies such as Catamarans. – One person dinghies like the One Man Lasers. – Two person such as Fireballs. – Family dinghies like Wayfarers.

Courses

Dinghy sailing is always taught by RYA qualified instructors starting with beginners courses. Courses are designed so that the skills you learn in one boat are transferable to the next. And you can complete courses in stages, so you can finish one section and continue with the next when you are ready – on holiday for instance.

Learning to Sail on Holiday

Learning to sail a dinghy on holiday is a great way to enter the world of sailing. With better weather and time on your side, you’ll feel more relaxed and possibly learn to sail much faster. With warmer waters you’ll almost certainly feel more confident when you capsize the dinghy.

Inshore Lakes or Costal Waters

Dinghy sailing on an inshore lake is generally considered safer. You’ll be sailing within easy distance of a rescue boat, making it popular with families. It’s also easier to lean this way. Without the distraction of the tide and avoiding other craft, you’ll feel more comfortable able to concentrate fully on your sailing. With stronger winds and greater challenges, coastal sailing is for the more experienced dinghy sailor.

Start Racing

It won’t be long before you feel ready to start racing and most clubs run novice courses. Boats designed for one or two people, and even high performance dinghies with a crew, can be raced without any official qualification. You will, however, need to learn to handle the dinghy and have a good grasp of the basics for your own safety.

Cruising

There is the option to cruise rather than race and there are clubs for people who simply wish to sail with others and discover new waters. Smaller boats for cruising are slightly different in that they are not designed for speed but for comfort. This means they handle easily in all weathers and are safer when away from shore with no rescue boat. Larger and heaver dinghies are known as day boats. You will also need to complete a course for cruising and have a good understanding of the basics.

Buying a Dinghy

Before you buy a dinghy you must bear in mind that your requirements will change as your sailing develops. You should also consider whether you want to sail alone or with a crew, if it needs to be portable and if you need a faster performance boat more or one more suitable for cruising. Newer, high performance boats will come at a higher price but there are bargains to be had with older boats.

More Dinghy Articles

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Enterprise dinghy racing on the Marine lake in Southport. Wind blowing at about 30-40mph. Increased later to 66mph (force 11)!

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1. Find Out All You Need to Know to Start Dinghy Sailing
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In a recent post we gave you the cheapest possible way to get on the water – in an inflatable. But, knowing that a rubber dinghy is not everyone’s idea of fun and that some people may like to go sailing in a boat that has a loo, this post provides 3 ways of sailing at a fraction of the cost of owning one.

myBoatshare.com is a membership sailing club that provides an alternative to owning a boat. From around £300 a month you can sail boats from 31ft to 39ft for up to 50 days a year.

You actually pay a higher monthly fee the more days you want, so don’t expect 50 days for £300. This is likely to get you 24 days, depending on the boat you sail. Other packages give you 36 or 49 full days sailing a year.

One of the really attractive things about a fractional club (as this one is) or fractional ownership is that the home marina mooring fees, boat maintenance and depreciation are all covered in the costs.

With myBoatshare.com you don’t join an individual boat, but do join membership to a class that best suits your sailing needs. It means you’re not tied to any sailing base, nor to a particular craft. You are free to book and sail any yacht in your membership class from any base at no extra cost.

There’s no capital investment but there is an annual membership of £199 (inc vat) on top of the montly fees (range from £299 – £699) which covers your consumables. There is a security deposit but no joining fee. This is good news as joining fees can be a real turn off, especially since you have to pay the security deposit as a lump sum up front (though you get it back if you do not damage the boat when you leave the scheme).

They have an online booking system which means you can book a single day, a mid-week break, a relaxing long weekend, or a family holiday.

myBoatshare.com is currently looking to expand their fleet and their locations so if you fancy a return of 5.5% (their claim), 63 full days sailing a year, no mooring fees, no insurance premiums, no maintenance costs or anti-fouling to pay then this could be right up your street (or creek).

On the basis that no single boat meets all your boating requirements, most people want to sail in a variety of locations, boats are very expensive and time consuming to own, and most owned boats are hugely underutilised, chartering is a good option. Except that boat charter can be very expensive too.

Pure Latitude looked at boating from every possible angle and set themselves up as a limited membership boat share club based on the Solent. They offer high quality yachts for fractional sailing.

Like myBoatshare.com, they don’t tie you to a particular boat. Instead they have a points system which are used to ‘buy’ the use of the boats in the fleet on a daily basis. Obviously, taking a bigger boat uses more points than a smaller boat, and taking a boat in high season uses more points than low season. Likewise, taking a boat at the weekend or bank holiday uses more points than weekdays.

The Pure Latitiude sailing fleet are split into five categories and membership to three levels from £300 (240 points), £400 (340 points) and £500 (460 points) per month. Each level is a little cheaper if you pay for annually. There is a joining fee to pay of £600 which may put some people off, however this goes towards a full induction and training on the boats so is a good investment.

Below is the points chart per day to give an idea of the way the points can be allocated (correct at time of publication July 2010)

MyBoatingInfo.com

In all cases, the companies and the boats’ owners need to make sure that the sailors using the yachts are well qualified with the best RYA sailing qualifications (or equivalent). To make sure your sialing cv is kept up to date you can use the service at www.myboatinginfo.com to log your qualifications, all your miles and create a printable PDF sailing cv.

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1. Find Out All You Need to Know to Start Dinghy Sailing
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I came across a great tool for all boat enthusiasts while browsing the web the other day. The Sail Boat Guide is a database that contains information on more than 5,000 production and semi-production sailing boats going back as far as 1900.

The majority include photos and or drawings, mostly from their library of original plans and brochures. The library is not yet completely ‘catalogued’ so it’s constantly having records added and it is updated every day.

Other details have been contributed by users when there is a reasonable certainty about accuracy. Also included is information on the designer, original builder, links to related websites and there are a number of search options.

Access to the info in SailBoatData.com is completely free, and no registration is required to use the service.

It’s a great site to search for your next boat.

Click Here to Access: http://www.sailboatdata.com/firstpage.asp

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We’ve teamed up with Boating.com to offer a 10% discount to our regular Harbour Exchange readers. All you need to do is use the code ‘SAVE10′ at checkout time and get the discount. It couldn’t be easier.

Boating.com has a Marine Store targeted at the US market and sells all sorts of marine goodies, from electronics to life jackets.

You can also check out their sister site Yachting.com where there is information on lots of different types of makes of boat.

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Having a boat you can trail means having the best of all worlds. If you are happy to spend the time and effort putting it in the water and retrieving it again afterwards, you can have the freedom to go boating wherever you choose.

It’s critical you know what you are doing though and that you have a vehicle that is powerful enough to tow a heavy boat and trailer. Make sure you check the recommended towing weight for your car and do not exceed this.

Also check the trailer thoroughly, especially if you bought the boat and trailer second hand. Get it serviced so you know it isn’t corroded, that the ball bearings and axel are properly greased and that the brakes actually work.

And if you are buying a boat on a trailer, make sure you get a light board with a road legal registration number plate on the back with the correct length of cable. A bit of cardboard taped on the back with no light board is illegal.

I believe that if you’d plan to be safe on the water there is no excuse for not being safe (and legal) on dry land.

To keep you safe when towing a boat, here are four useful videos produced by Practical Boat Owner (PBO) with their partners Land Rover. They show how to check the trailer is safe before setting off, how to reverse with a trailer on the back of the car, how to launch the boat from the trailer and how to recover the boat back onto the trailer from the water.









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If you like foiling boats and boards (which we do) then you’ll love this. It’s a custom built foiling skiff with no hull.

It’s light and fast but needs a tow (a bit like a glider) to get going. And if the crew aren’t super brilliant and let the boat stall, it needs a tow to get going again.

I can’t see it catching on as an olympic sailing class but for a bit of ‘engineering’ fun have a look at the video.

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If you scour the terrestrial and satellite TV channels hard enough you can catch a glimpse of some action on the water, but you really need to be looking for it. You are also likely to have to record it to watch at another time as it’s probably broadcast when normal people are busy sleeping or working.

So if you love the sport of sailing, the thrill of match racing and the adrenalin rush of seeing Americas Cup boats vying for the mark you can now get all of that ‘on demand’. When you want it, where you want it, all on your PC or Mac. You simply need a good broadband connection and the coverage is free.

I’ve been really enjoying the coverage of the Louis Vuitton Trophy over the past few days. Watching highlights on Harbour Exchange’s front page as well as live broadcasts on the dedicated multi-media Sail.TV page has been truly excellent.

And if you can’t wait to see some of the latest sailing racing or major sailing events (including the Louis Vuitton Trophy, the Audi Med Cup and others) you can watch the highlights programs right below this post.

Bookmark Harbour Exchange so you never miss the best sailing racing events from Sail.TV.

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13.5m people have watched this on YouTube. If you’re one of them enjoy it all over again. If this is a 1st for you watch it all the way through.

It has nothing to do with sailing but it’s something that is worth sharing. Feel good on a Thursday morning.

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