'OUR DINGHY OUTBOARD WAS BEING SMASHED TO PIECES BY THE SWELL'

When a change in the weather leads to serious damage to Simon Hardaker's outboard and no spares available anywhere, he resorts to ingenuity and improvisation to keep the show on the road

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Our dinghy is the equivalent of everyone's car at home; it's how we get from our boat at anchor, to anywhere in the harbour.

Used most days, it has to accommodate one or all of us – there’s often four aboard – together with bags of laundry and shopping, or just going for drinks, food or to explore ashore.

When the dinghy or its engine gives any trouble at all, it quickly becomes a problem. Unless you have an alternative means of getting to and from the boat, you may need a more expensive marina berth, assuming one is available, until the issue is resolved.

Two incidents in the Caribbean recently serve to illustrate that even in somewhere with so little rise and fall of tide, where you leave your dinghy needs more than a cursory consideration. And small changes in wind direction in under an hour can change the swell conditions in an anchorage and make what looks like a benign dinghy dock into a really dangerous spot.

If you do have a problem, spares to make repairs may not be as readily available as in the UK or US. So, what alternatives have you got, and what tools do you have on board to help?

The first incident happened at Falmouth Harbour, Antigua. It’s quite a common occurrence in the Caribbean and elsewhere in the world, even around the equator with low rise and fall of tide.

CARIBBEAN WEATHER

The dinghy dock in Falmouth Harbour is large enough to accommodate dozens of dinghies from around the great natural harbour there and it’s busy all of the time. Dinghies of all shapes, sizes (and budgets) are variously secured on short and long tethers. Inevitably, sometimes a boat ends up where it shouldn't be.