Phil Sampson never dreamed that doubling up on his rubberware could be so much fun…
Personally I blame Andy, my neighbouring berth holder. Meet Andy and you’d think he’s P a nice guy, which is absolutely true except that he has a habit of leading me, and in particular my wallet, astray. The problem with Andy is that he knows far too much about boating than is good for me. He’s owned more boats than you can shake a stick at, and even renovates them for a living. So when he speaks, I listen…
DINGHY ENVY
A couple of years ago, I invested in my first dinghy, a 2.3m O2 Lite. We’d watched too many people struggling with heavyweight dinghies over the years and concluded a tender simply wasn’t for us, but then along came the O2 Lite which promised us the ‘boat to beach’ (or, more likely, ‘boat to bar’) solution we craved. Best of all, the dinghy packed up into a bag small enough to fit into the stowage box in the engineroom of our Fairline Targa 34.
Apparently, we wouldn’t even know it was aboard when we weren’t using it and for a year or two, everything was great. We coupled the dinghy up to an e-Propulsion outboard (great choice – lighter than a conventional outboard, silent and no need to carry petrol on board) and pottered around the Hamble and our local bays in bliss. Then along came Andy. He’d just bought an O2 Lite dinghy as well. But not for him the compact 2.3m version. Oh no! He’d gone for the 2.7m whopper. Dinghy envy set in instantly. Ours was a bit on the small side, and with legs curled up wherever they would fit, pins and needles and even cramp weren’t unknown. Also, I’d never been overly keen on the colour of our boat. It only came in black, while the larger one came in regulation dinghy grey.
“Ah yes,” I said to Andy in a fraught attempt to defend my corner. “But it would never fit in our storage box.” “Hmm, not so sure about that,” came the reply. With that, Andy turned tail and returned two minutes later with his O2 Lite on his back. Its case includes backstraps so you can wear it as an oversized rucksack. True, it makes you look like the maritime equivalent of an Everest Sherpa, but it does make carting the thing around a whole lot easier.
That extra 400mm of rubber was about to cost me just shy of £700!
“Open up your engine hatch then,” said Andy, and to my consternation, the dinghy slid snugly into the box. Andy gave me a wink and a grin, knowing that he’d just sealed the deal for our local chandlery. That extra 400mm of rubber was about to cost me just shy of £700. But no worries, I thought. We can flog the old dinghy on eBay.
A NEW PERSPECTIVE
Then we made our big mistake. Before we sell it, we thought, let’s take it for a spin up the Grand Union – our local canal. I’ve lived near the cut for most of
