A Mirror Dinghy for the 21st Century?
Picture the moment. Mum and dad decide that this morning they are going to drag their two kids (10 and 8) away from their iPads or tablets and show them that there is a real, non digitised world out there. So they decide to take them along to the local dinghy sailing club where there is an open day. Mum and dad are your typical 30/40 somethings, mortgage, car, two jobs, no time, certainly no free budget. Along they go and they have a fun day out scooting about in a racing dinghy getting some fresh air. They have a chat about it and then..reality starts to creep in:
Rough costs for a family of 4 to start sailing BEFORE buying a boat
Sailing club membership: £400
Lessons:
Clothing (wetsuits etc): £400
A boat:
Insurance:
In 1962, The Mirror Dinghy costing the equivalent of £1200 (2015) turned sailing into a mass recreation in the UK. However, in 2015 the costs involved in getting on the water have raised the bar again, a DIY Mirror Kit will cost you the best part of £4000 - a £2600 increase above the rate of inflation since 1962. Can we change this with a new, cheap and easy to build planing dinghy? Could this be the Mirror of the 21st Century?
Dad and mum start to feel less enthusiastic about all this…dad had no idea that a dinghy was going to cost more than a car AND he’s going to have to spend £200 getting a tow bar fitted. Mum also looks at the carbon fibre masts, the wetsuits, the cramped boats with their highly complex web of lines and cleats…this wasn’t what she’d dreamt about… picnics, camping, adventure…Swallows & Amazons. Surely the point of a boat was you stayed in it? So they head back to their lives, inspired but depressed.
Now, turn the clock back to 1962. Finally the UK was starting to drag itself out of the economic slump post WW2. The nation was on the cusp of the swinging 60s. Dad, had been in the Navy in WW2 and had always fancied learning to sail a dinghy, being a 1960s dad, he was the sort of man who could DO THINGS. His car required constant fettling to keep it working properly, so he knew how to tune it, how to change the brakes and sort out the rust himself. If Mum wanted a new bathroom cabinet, dad went to the shed for a weekend and built one. He was competent with his hands and had a pride in what he could do; these skills were as much a part of him as his pipe, his Three Nuns Tobacco, his woollen tank-top and his slippers.
So when Jack Holt and Barry Bucknall, with the Daily Mirror released plans for a self-built wooden boat that could be knocked together in a weekend, in the shed, and which could be put on the roof of your Austin 1100 and taken on holiday to Bridlington then 1960s Dad stepped into action. The boats were cheap a kit cost £63 11 shillings. (Roughly £1200 today (2015), $1850US, $2500OZ, $2800NZ, 26,000ZAR, 1700EU) a mere £15 deposit allowed you to pay off the rest over 12 months.
The Mirror was a revolutionary design, it used stitch and glue, utilised modern epoxies and marine ply and had a clever gunter rig which meant that the boat was effectively a sloop but one where the spars would fit into the boat and the whole lot could be car topped.
Words: Richard P with thanks to Mik Storer and David Henshall
Pictures: Ian Henahan, MIK Storer, Trident UK
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