| Travels with a Willful Dinghy 
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There are times in life, I have found, if you want to get anything done, you have to disregard the experts. by John Vigor |
For a while after we got back from our circumnavigation of Vancouver Island last summer, we would ask our sailing friends, "What's black-and-white and grows a green beard from its rear end?" But by now the joke has grown stale. The whole of Oak Harbor marina knows the answer. It's Tokoloshe—our dinghy.
For six weeks he was towed around Vancouver Island behind our 25-foot Cape Dory sailboat, Jabula. And because I neglected to antifoul his bottom before we left, he grew a fine beard of sea grass that trailed four inches aft from the transom.
Unlike most yacht tenders, Tokoloshe is a he because he's named after an imp famous in Zulu folklore for impregnating unsuspecting Zulu maidens. At least, the tokoloshe is the one who gets the blame. The tokoloshe is squat, so virtuous Zulu maidens living on the hot and humid southeastern coast of South Africa raise their beds on bricks to let him walk right under without stopping. Judging by the number of virgin births, the tokoloshe gets around an awful lot, but to the best of my knowledge, our tokoloshe is the first to round cold and clammy Vancouver Island.
Tokoloshe came with my last boat, Tagati, a Santana 22. He was almost an afterthought. "By the way," said Tagati's former owner, as he handed her over, "there's also a dinghy if you want it." He pointed to the back of his pickup. The dinghy was 10 feet long, almost half as long as Tagati. It was a limp-looking, narrow-gutted, open fiberglass boat, obviously an outboard fishing skiff. It was roughly made and about half-finished.
"Bit big for a tender," I said. "Can't possibly fit on board."
The former owner shrugged. "Take it anyway," he said. "You can always swap it or throw it away."
Well, after I'd done a few things to Tokoloshe, such as adding gunwales, a skeg, a seat, oarlocks and a sculling notch, my wife June and I kind of got used to him. We towed him behind Tagati all over, from Olympia in the south to the Gulf Islands in the north, ignoring the amused glances of other cruisers with properly scaled tenders. He halved our speed and dwarfed the boat, but he had some good points. He tracked well under tow, and he rowed well in heavy wind and rough water. He also sculled well.
But when we bought our little Cape Dory last spring, and got to thinking about a circumnavigation of Vancouver Island, we talked to a couple of people who'd done it.
"You can't tow that thing around the island," one declared. "You'll lose it at sea for sure. It'll swamp, or else it'll ram you from astern and sink you."
"What size engine is in your boat?" the other asked.
"A 6.5 horsepower Yanmar diesel," I replied.
"Just about enough power for the dinghy," he observed. "Nothing left over for the boat."
There are times in life, I have found, when, if you want to get anything done, you have to disregard the experts. June and I thought about it a lot. A dinghy of any kind is a major problem for a 25-footer with little stowage space below. And, as we would be doing hundreds of miles in the open Pacific, we didn't want to carry Tokoloshe on the foredeck, even if he could have fit there. In the end, we decided to give him a chance to show his seaworthiness, on the understanding that if he misbehaved, if he started filling with spray, or ramming Jabula's stern, he would be cast adrift on the high seas.
So Jabula, Tokoloshe and I set out for Canada in mid-June. The plan was for me to single-handed the boat to Port Hardy, at the northern end of Vancouver Island, where June would join me for the 300 odd miles of open Pacific down the outside.
Despite the experts' predictions, we discovered that when the wind didn't blow there was power enough for both the boat and the dinghy—as long as the boat didn't exceed 4.5 knots. The wind didn't blow very much last summer, at least from the right direction, so we spent a lot of time plodding along at 4.5 knots or less.
Tokoloshe's first big test came in the Strait of Georgia, between Nanoose and Deep Bay in Bayne Sound. The strait is a small shallow sea, and it was in a bad mood when we left Nanoose on a cold, drizzly morning. A 25-knot southeaster had kicked up a lively chop. While Jabula was happily surfing among the whitecaps on a broad reach under a double-reefed mainsail and working jib, Tokoloshe started misbehaving. He'd catch breaking waves and surf down their faces, lunging off to one side or the other of Jabula's transom. He'd fetch up way out to the side with his nose level with our stern, where he would hover, then drop back until his painter caught up with him and jerked him over onto the other tack. Then he'd come surfing back on our other quarter.
I was afraid he'd come straight at Jabula's stern sooner or later and do some damage, so with some difficulty I clapped a line on Tokoloshe's painter to make a long bridle. That did the trick for a while. It stopped his surfing runs about 10 feet farther aft. But it also led to heavier jerks. I began to wonder if he'd pull the stern cleats out of their moorings.
I tried a doubled length of shock cord to ease the strain, but the effect was negligible. What worked in the end was a six-foot length of quarter-inch nylon line. It would stretch to the thickness of a twanging guitar string after every oncoming rush of the dinghy, but it never broke. Meanwhile, I was feeling very stupid. In the peace and comfort of my armchair at home, I'd anticipated this very problem. I had a plan to cure it. I would simply dangle Tokoloshe's anchor on a line over his stern, to form a drogue that would hold him back.
Yeah, right. But how? Now, in this howling wind amid the whitecaps, I couldn't possibly leap aboard the dinghy to lower the anchor. I couldn't even leave the helm for more than a few seconds or Jabula would round up and flog her sails to bits.
So we surfed and twanged our way into Deep Bay, where a kindly person called Marilyn Guille beckoned us into an empty berth.
"Saw you out there," she remarked. "Figured you weren't having much fun."
Darned right I wasn't. I determined to make a better plan before we rounded the top of the island and met the open Pacific.
Unfortunately, nothing occurred to me. Every time I thought about the Tokoloshe problem, my brain would deliberately veer off to more pleasant thoughts, such as where one might find a cool glass of beer, or a nice steak and fries.
For the next week or so, Tokoloshe behaved well, doing some fancy footwork and flying out into big circles behind us when we blundered through Whirlpool Rapids at 9 knots plus, but otherwise not causing too much trouble, except the he had to be bailed out every morning because of the rain. Did I mention the rain? It rained a lot.
Days later, when I was waiting in Port Hardy for June to join me, Steve and Alice, aboard a Cal 27 called Second Wind hailed me.
"Saw you sculling," Steve said. "Can you teach me?"
"Sure," I said, and within a few minutes he and Tokoloshe were waggling their way around the harbor quite competently.
When I told him I intended to tow Tokoloshe down the outside of the island, Steve recalled a magazine article he'd read sometime, somewhere.
"You need a funnel," he said. "An eight-inch-diameter plastic funnel. You thread it on the dinghy painter about 12 feet from the bow, pointed end forward. Most of the time it's out of the water, but when she overruns her painter, the funnel will reverse and slow her, so she won't crash into you."
It sounded like a good plan, and like all good plans it was made better by the fact that, by some miracle, I already had the equipment on board, a spare eight-inch plastic funnel. I tied a stopper knot in Tokoloshe's painter 12 feet from his sharp end, for the funnel to fetch up against, and put the funnel in the cockpit locker where I could find it if I needed it.
That, I thought, would take care of the surfing problem. The other major problem was that Tokoloshe could fill with spray and become a waterlogged dead weight if we were faced with a heavy-weather beat at sea.
The answer came to me in IV's pub after a couple of beers, when I conceived another of what my dear wife calls my famous plans. I would make Tokoloshe a spray cover out of some blue poly tarp and a length of shock cord.
The tarp wasn't quite long enough, but I pounded in five brass grommets along each edge, cut off the overhanging bits to a Tokoloshe shape, and threaded the shock cord through the grommets so that it gripped under the gunwale. I was very proud of myself.
When June and I set off from Port Hardy, we immediately found ourselves in an area described in the Pilot as "remote." And not only remote, but hellish windy, too. We sat in picturesque Bull Harbour, our northernmost anchorage, for three nights while the wind howled and set Jabula racing from side to side on the end of her rode. Tokoloshe, following reluctantly at the end of her tether, seemed to shudder with each approaching blast. Three other yachts on a circumnavigation of the island were also stormbound. They were dancing around nearby. Burl and Abigail Romick, of Wind Song, a 35-foot C&C Landfall out of Portland, Oregon, invited us over for coffee one evening.
"Does your dinghy fit on board?" Burl asked.
"No, we're going to tow him."
"Across Nahwitti Bar?" Burl asked. "It can get very rough." He had made this trip several times before.
"I have a secret weapon," I said, thinking smugly of my new cover. "You haven't seen it yet."
"How fascinating," said Abigail. "Your dinghy's a he?"
"Growing a beard," I said. "Gotta be a he."
"Hope he's a good swimmer," said Burl.
The Nahwitti Bar, between Bull Harbour and the infamous Cape Scott, was the last obstacle between us and the open sea. It's a formidable race, and the guide books are full of warnings about it. The tide, running fast against incoming swells from the vast Pacific, heaps the sea into ferocious breaking pyramids capable of sinking small boats. If one such sea should rear up and topple into the dinghy, that would be the end of Tokoloshe.
On the third evening it was still blowing hard, but the new weather forecast for the next day was light northwesterlies. There was great rejoicing in the anchorage. We went over to visit Stuart and Pip Briscoe aboard Pyreneenne, a 41-foot Jeanneau sloop from Sidney, B.C. They were sailing around the island with their daughters, Kate 7 and Lizzie 3. They'd been cooped up in Bull Harbour quite long enough listening to radio reports from fishing boats at Cape Scott reporting 12-foot seas.
"I'm leaving tomorrow, come hell or high water," Stuart announced.
"So am I," I said.
"Slack water's at 9 a.m."
"I'm leaving at 7 a.m."
"Two hours before slack? You going to be all right? You towing that dinghy?"
"It'll be fine," I said. "We need a jump start to get to Sea Otter Cove. We can only do 4.5 knots under power."
"Hmm," he said noncommittally. "You been sailing long?"
After coffee, we sculled back to Jabula and I dug Tokoloshe's new cover out of the cockpit locker. It turned out to be difficult to fit the cover from Jabula's cockpit, even after I'd tied Tokoloshe firmly alongside with bow and stern painters. I could slip the aft end of the cover over the dinghy's stern, but I couldn't reach to the far gunwale to slip the shockcord over. June came on deck while I was perched with my backside high in the air and my head down low over the side.
"What on earth ...?" she began.
"Just hold my feet," I said. "Then I can stretch out a bit farther."
I managed to roll the shock cord over Tokoloshe's gunwale with the tips of my fingers, and pulled the cover forward as far as it would go.
"It's short," June observed. "There's a gap in front."
"Tarp wasn't big enough," I said testily. I wasn't in the mood for criticism. "Anyway, it'll keep most of the spray out."
And perhaps it would have done, but as soon as I freed Tokoloshe to lie aft on her painter, a gust of wind came along and started the tautly-stretched cover rattling loudly. It's surprising how much noise that kind of poly tarp makes in a strong wind. Then, in the flicker of an eyelid, the two sides of the cover sprang up over the gunwales and contracted themselves into a sausage along Tokoloshe's centerline.
"It's like a furled umbrella," June observed. She was trying hard not to laugh.
I looked around to see if there were any witnesses on Wind Song or Pyreneenne. Nope. I'd been lucky. I sprang into the dinghy, ripped off the cover, and hurled it into Jabula's cockpit. "The hell with it," I announced. "So much for our secret weapon. Damn dinghy will just have to take his chances. I'm through fiddling with that cover."
That night I dreamed Tokoloshe was talking to me.
"You don't treat me right," he complained. "First you gave me an old hosepipe for gunwale fendering, and now you won't fix me a proper cover."
"You don't deserve a cover," I said. "You constantly misbehave. Do you remember when we were anchored in Port Neville? You were an absolute pest. You would do nothing but lie to leeward and ram Jabula with your stern."
"Couldn't help it," said Tokoloshe. "Wind and current were opposed."
"But why your stern? It's the only part of you that isn't fendered. It seemed so deliberate. I had to keep getting up in the middle of the night, when it was cold and raining."
"You're neurotic," said Tokoloshe. "You're a control freak."
"It's not just me. Nobody could sleep with a dinghy ramming the boat every few minutes. I tried all my best tricks: mooring you alongside with fenders, dropping your anchor over the stern to hold you off, and everything I could think of. But you still pranced and cavorted and thumped and made my life miserable."
"You never take any notice of me," Tokoloshe whined. "You won't even buy me a motor. A small one would do. And you use me to show off. This sculling business, it's real slow and it makes my rear end waggle. It's just showing off for your benefit."
"It's an ancient art," I said defensively. "And I can get you home if I lose one oar." "My oars don't even match," he observed. "You lost the Oak Harbor Thrift Store Oar War, remember? You're a loser."
I don't normally remember my dreams, but this one was fresh in my mind when I woke up the next morning, perhaps because it's not often I'm insulted by a dinghy.
As we approached Nahwitti Bar under mainsail and motor we could see breaking water, whitecaps on the tops of standing waves. The current was still flowing seaward at about 4 knots, and we were soon sucked into it. For 45 minutes, Jabula stood on her head in short, steep seas. June chocked herself into a corner of the cockpit and hung on grimly. A large fishing boat, a dragger, passed us slowly to port, plunging her bow through the steepening swells rolling in from the Pacific, and sending spray high over her bridge. I didn't dare look at Tokoloshe. I was busy sawing away at the helm to keep Jabula going the right way through the swirls.
"How's he doing?" I asked June.
"Still afloat," she said. "Rolling like mad, but so far, so good."
When we came to buoy "MA," marking the end of the bar, the seas gradually flattened and we had a chance to pull Tokoloshe alongside for inspection. To my astonishment, he was almost bone dry inside.
"He's done very well," June said.
Yeah, I thought. But he can do better. Specially when we're at anchor.
We rounded Cape Scott, sometimes referred to as the Cape Horn of the northwest, at a respectable distance. The day was gray and cool. The wind came at us from all directions and strong currents kept changing direction every few minutes.
After a hard day at sea and a difficult landfall, we finally tied up to a buoy in Sea Otter Cove, tired but happy. The bay was beautiful and unspoiled. We had the whole wild anchorage to ourselves. Then the tide changed. Jabula went to one side of the mooring buoy—Tokoloshe went to the other side. It wasn't easy. In fact, I would have said it was impossible, but he managed. It took me 10 minutes to sort out the mess of tangled lines. Then, to avoid a repeat performance, we abandoned the nice buoy and went out to anchor in the bay.
As we were sitting in the cockpit, enjoying a spectacular sunset, I noticed that Tokoloshe had now fouled his painter. He seemed to have got it stuck right under the boat, between the keel and the rudder. Deliberately, no doubt.
"What a shame," June said. "Just when he behaved so nicely all day."
I kept waking up that night, thinking about how I was going to have to dive to free the painter, and how cold the water was. A person's heart can stop beating from the sudden shock of that cold. But next morning I found, to my great relief, that I could free the painter by undoing the funnel stopper knot and pulling the loose end through. I tied Tokoloshe firmly alongside, with fenders, to stop any further nonsense.
For the rest of the trip he behaved quite well, apparently not even harboring any feelings of revenge for being dragged over sharp rocks or being pooped on by an eagle.
By the time we reached the Strait of Juan de Fuca we had learned to leave him to his own devices on the end of a 75-foot extended painter. He could surf away out there to his heart's content without hitting anything, even in the 30 knot winds we experienced on the way to Neah Bay, and we didn't have to rig the emergency funnel drogue. He simply dragged his own painter in a big loop through the water, and it slowed him down.
I can't really say he was happier out there, or felt more appreciated, but he was certainly less troublesome when he could sense we had turned the corner for home.
He had his last excitement of the circumnavigation in Deception Pass, where a stubby Bayliner rushing against the current like an aquatic insect on steroids kicked up a fearsome wake. Tokoloshe rolled gunwales-down three or four times while I shook my fist at the Bayliner, but he didn't ship any water.
Now, he's hauled out on the dinghy float in Oak Harbor Marina. I have scrubbed off his beard and he looks quite respectable, apart from a few barnacles and a host of scratches. I expect he's boasting to the other dinghies about where he's been and what he's done. That doesn't bother me any. He's a wilful dinghy, no doubt about that, but I guess he has earned the right to brag a little.
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