Ask any Insider who’s cruised for real and they’ll tell you the same thing: the dinghy is the most-used and least-respected boat in the fleet. It’s your car when you’re at anchor — your run to the dock for ice, your ride to the beach, your way to dinner ashore, your lifeline back to the mothership after a long evening. And because it’s small and humble, people treat it carelessly. That’s a mistake. More cruising trips get derailed by a lost, flipped, or broken tender than by almost anything that happens to the big boat.
Treating your dinghy like the important boat it is — securing it, loading it smart, and running it with the same respect you’d give any vessel — is pure cruising seamanship. Here’s how the Insiders do it.
Boarding and Loading Without a Swim
Most dinghy disasters happen in the first and last ten seconds — getting in and out. A small inflatable or tender is tippy and unforgiving, and the classic dunking comes from someone stepping on the far tube, standing up too early, or piling all the weight on one side.
Board low and centered. Step into the middle of the boat, keep your weight low, and sit down before you do anything else — don’t stand there sorting yourself out. Load the heavy gear first and keep it centered and low, not stacked up high or crammed to one side. Spread people out so the weight’s balanced bow to stern and side to side. And keep it under the boat’s rated capacity — an overloaded dinghy rides low, swamps easily in a little chop, and is slow and squirrelly to boot.
When you come alongside the big boat or a dock, get a hand on it and hold on before anyone moves. The moment of transfer — stepping from tender to dock or ladder — is when people go in the water. Steady the boat, one person moves at a time, everyone stays low.
Life Jackets and the Kill Switch Aren’t Optional
Here’s a hard truth: the dinghy is statistically one of the more dangerous boats you’ll run, precisely because people relax on it. It’s small, it’s a short hop, it feels casual — so folks skip the life jackets and skip clipping in. Don’t.
Wear your life jackets in the tender, especially at night, in any chop, and any time kids are aboard. Clip the engine kill-switch lanyard to yourself when you’re running it — if you go over the side, you do not want that little outboard circling back at you under power, and you don’t want the dinghy motoring off to the horizon without you. And carry a light at night; a dinghy is nearly invisible to other boats in a dark anchorage, so a flashlight or a small nav light isn’t just courtesy, it’s survival.
The casualness is exactly the danger. Run the tender like the real boat it is.
Secure It Like You Mean It
A huge number of cruising headaches come down to one thing: a dinghy that got away. Left tied with a lazy hitch, it drifts off in the night. Towed carelessly, it flips or the line parts. Hoisted sloppy, it bangs the hull all night or comes loose underway.
At anchor, tie it off with a proper line and a knot that won’t shake loose — a bowline or a well-set cleat hitch, not a couple of half-hearted wraps. Give it enough scope that it rides comfortably behind the boat without snubbing, but not so much that it wanders into your prop or another boat. Overnight, many Insiders pull the dinghy right up snug to the swim platform or hoist it on davits so it can’t wander, chafe, or get stolen.
If you tow it while underway, keep the tow line the right length — long enough that the dinghy sits comfortably a wave back, short enough that it doesn’t surf and slew around. In any real sea, don’t tow at all; get it aboard or on the davits. A towed dinghy in a following sea can flip, fill, and either sink or turn into a several-hundred-pound anchor dragging off your stern.
Take Care of the Motor and Basics
The little outboard on your tender lives a hard life — salt, sun, sand, and neglect. And it always seems to quit at the worst moment, halfway between the beach and the boat with the tide running out.
Keep enough fuel aboard, and keep a little reserve; running dry on a dinghy in a current is how you end up rowing hard or drifting toward the jetty. Rinse the motor and give it basic care so it starts when you need it. Carry oars or a paddle every single time, no exceptions — the day the outboard won’t start is the day you’ll bless the paddle. A simple bailer or bilge pump, a small anchor, and a length of spare line round out a tender that can handle a surprise. None of it takes up much room, and all of it turns a potential ordeal into a minor annoyance.
Anchor Your Dinghy at the Beach
One overlooked skill: landing and leaving a dinghy at a beach without losing it to the tide. Drag it up on the sand and walk off to lunch, and a rising tide will happily float it away while you’re not looking. Insiders who beach a tender either haul it well above the high-water line, or set a small dinghy anchor up the beach and a stern line to hold it off, so it stays put through a tide change and doesn’t pound on the sand in the surf.
Losing your ride while you’re ashore turns a nice afternoon into a very long, wet problem. A minute of thought at the beach saves it.
The Insider’s Respect
The dinghy is your freedom when you’re cruising — it’s what turns an anchorage into a basecamp, gets you to the beach bar, and carries the ice and the crew and the dog. Treat it with respect and it’ll never let you down. Board low and balanced, wear your life jackets and clip the kill switch, secure it like you mean it, keep the motor fed and cared for, carry a paddle and a light, and never let a rising tide steal it off the beach.
The Insiders who cruise for years without a tender horror story aren’t lucky. They just gave the smallest boat in the fleet the same respect they give the big one. Your ride to shore has earned it.
See you on the water.
Small tenders are less stable and more easily swamped than larger boats. Always wear a life jacket, use the engine kill switch, stay within the boat’s rated capacity, carry oars and a light, and take extra care boarding and loading. A short hop still deserves full attention.