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The True Kit Stowaway

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Nobody rows any more.

But it’s important as you get older.

I paddle along at walking pace while RIBs roar past at 12 knots, setting all the boats snatching at their anchor chains and shattering the peace.

But rowing takes a toll as well.

Not on me, you understand. There’s nothing wrong with me – I fully intend to be still at the oars when I’m 100. It’s the dinghy that can’t cope with the strain.

This is my second to be condemned because the rowlocks split away from the tubes. This one lasted two years.

 

 

Dinghies these days are not designed to be rowed. I wrote to the manufacturers and complained – all in French with help from Google Translate. The 3D company of Brest wrote back and said they couldn’t understand what I was on about. Now they don’t reply at all.

Everything else about their little 2.3m, 14kg SuperLight TwinAir was great: I could hoik it out of the forehatch, blow it up and flip it over the side all in ten minutes. I rowed it across the lagoon at Barbuda into a 15kt Tradewind (two miles in 1hr40mins).

But in the end, I gave it to Henrik, an impoverished Swedish sailor who swears he can sell it in Colombia (and yes, I did tell him about the slow puncture I hadn’t been able to find).

For a while, I thought I would be condemned to getting an outboard after all (maybe an electric one) and growing flabby with stick-like arms and shortness of breath. But then an inflatable company in New Zealand came to the rescue. They had decided there was a market – maybe a very small market – for a tiny, lightweight rowing dinghy that could get two people and their overnight bags from the shore to a mooring (as long as it wasn’t too far.)

Welcome to the True Kit Stowaway.

 

It is certainly different. You can’t put an outboard on it even if you want to: It doesn’t have a transom. It’s going to raise a few eyebrows on the dinghy dock – and I very much doubt anyone will want to steal it.

But underneath the undoubted resemblance to a beach toy, this 7.2m, 14kg boat has been very carefully thought out.

For a start it’s a catamaran. The floor is pretty much out of the water so there’s almost no drag. I can row this thing at a steady 2.5kts – whereas 2.3 was top speed with the old one. Also, it’s a lot less effort with the good solid Railblaza rowlocks set at the proper angle so the oars don’t chafe the sides like they used to.

The oars are short which means that, with a passenger or a folding bike and all the shopping, you can row with your knees up. Indeed, the fixed seat is set well forward so there’s nowhere to brace your feet anyway. In the Stowaway, you sit upright and pull long strokes that send the little boat skimming across the water with no apparent effort.

The rowing position does mean that you sit on the bones of your bum rather than having a nice pair chubby buttocks as. cushion but I have found that a folded T-shirt makes all the difference.

I did worry about the amount of spray coming aboard because the bow is fairly low (so you can climb in from the water, a nightmare with the traditional inflatable). But it turns out to be no worse than usual. The main problem is that there’s nowhere for that water to go: Without a transom, you can’t have a self-bailer.

However, with one person, the weight (and therefore the puddle) stays well forward, away from the shopping. With two, the passenger balances the baggage on their lap and just gets their feet wet.

We’ll see how we get on, but the Stowaway does appeal to the singlehander’s “small and simple” principles. I really think this might be the beginning of a beautiful partnership.

The catamaran design of the hull.

A couple of YouTube videos of how well she rows:

 Rowing the lagoon at Barbuda: https://www.oldmansailing.com/a-long-way-for-a-lost-hat/

Footnote: 3D did get back to me in the end. No, they can’t sell me a dinghy without rowlocks. But apparently I can remove them by peeling them off with help from a heat gun.

Meanwhile, I’ve taken to rowing the 0.7 miles to the marina to save carrying the shopping. It doesn’t seem to take much effort and it’s only 20 minutes…

Update October 15th 2024:

Actually, not so good – at least not in less-than-ideal conditions.

Because the Stowaway has no transom, it cannot have a self-bailer. This means that, rowing into a headwind (particularly with the low bow) the boat gradually fills with water. Worse still, it has a removable floor, so the water collects under this and cannot be bailed out. You have to turn it upside down and leave it to drain. 

In other words, I believe this dinghy is only suitable for calm conditions. I think it would be great for inland or very sheltered waters – but I’m afraid I’m going back to the 3D – and this time, I will install the stainless steel rowlocks immediately and strengthen the rubber mouldings by sewing lashings into them before they break.

Update Febery 21st 2025

Oh dear. This is the email I just sent to the True Kit company:

Hi Fergus,

I have now been using the Stowaway for four months and I’m afraid that I have to tell you I hate it with a vengeance and can’t wait for the delivery of a 3D TwinAir, as I had before.

As a small boat tender, I think the Stowaway is a disaster.

To begin with, inflating it is a ridiculous performance. You have to fit the floor and inflate it a bit, then inflate the front a bit and then the back a bit – all the while making sure the valve caps don’t get caught underneath – all of which is not easy on a confined foredeck.

And, of course, you mustn’t forget the seat has to be fitted before completing the inflation.

While it certainly rows very easily, the biggest, most catastrophic design flaw is that in anything of a chop, spray flies over the low bow and, because there is no transom and so there can be no self-bailer, in no time at all the dinghy is full of water.

It is then too heavy to lift out and empty. Even if you bail it out, you still can’t lift it because of the weight of water trapped under the floor.

To begin with, I was impressed with the Railblaza rowlocks, but then started having trouble removing the oars. Eventually, one of the locking pins jammed. I freed it with a screwdriver – but then the pin came out altogether. After that, I lost it.

Even deflating the dinghy is a nuisance because one of the valves is halfway down its length so you can’t push the air out as you roll it up.

And now the floor leaks – presumably because of a sharp stone getting trapped underneath. This is something that would not happen with an integral floor.

While I’m on the subject of the floor – even if I leave the dinghy to dry before rolling it up, it’s still wet underneath.

And having to reverse the oars for stowage is a pain when coming alongside. The rowing position is really unpleasant too – having your feet flat on the floor means you’re sitting directly on the bones of your pelvis. I ended up using a cushion.

The pump is good, though.

Regards,

John

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A day at the beach

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I suppose I shall see a lot of beaches in the years to come, but here, today, in Aruba, I really think I have found the best of them – at least, the best so far…

It is called Surfside Beach which is really a misnomer since the barrier reef turns this part of the Caribbean into an enormous, placid lagoon. The water is that particular shade of turquoise that comes only from zero pollution and the brightest white sand.

As beaches go, it’s right up there with the Princess Diana Beach in Barbuda. But Surfside has something special. Surfside has trees. Really: Trees growing right by the water – some of them actually in the water – and giving real shade too, unlike the thatched constructions the resorts put up because they’re too posh for umbrellas. Also, with a tree, your legs don’t stick out and get burned.

And I was ready for a beach.

On the boat, it’s 35°C in the cabin and the deck makes you wish your tired feet were fireproof, as the Drifters used to sing. Besides, I had spent the morning cycling 12 kilometres tracking down metalwork shops which didn’t stock the kind of aluminium pipe I need for the self-steering (get it from Amsterdam).

So, I packed a sandwich and a couple of beers into the cool bag and rowed ashore to stake my claim. It wasn’t hard. The beach is half a mile long. There’s a tree every ten metres and there can’t have been more than a dozen people.

Now, I don’t want you to think that my life is one long holiday: Along with the beer and the sandwich, I had my folding fisherman’s chair and the laptop. I would sit in the shade and write the daily chapter.

The Daily Chapter is set in stone (along with one from the Teach Yourself Spanish audiobook). I have worked out that if I write a chapter a day, I will have the next book finished by the time I leave for Cartagena and a month of language classes.

But it was hot work rowing the 400 metres to the beach, so first I had to cool off.

It seems that I was in the water for 90 minutes. Just floating like you do in a bath when you don’t have to be anywhere in particular – only, at Surfside, I didn’t have to keep reaching down to the other end to top up with hot water. It was 30°C and it stayed 30°C. When I came out, I looked like a prune. But staring up through the leaves and working out whether the deep blue of the sky is actually what they call “sky blue” does take time.

Besides, everyone else seemed to be doing the same: couples, mothers with children, dogs – all just lying in the shallows and letting the day pass.

But you can’t eat a sandwich in the water – or at least, you have to get out to fetch it and, afterwards, you tend to be a bit sticky and rather red from the beetroot, so you have to get back in, and there goes the rest of the afternoon…

But I am proud to say that I did, eventually fire up the laptop and I was sitting under the tree tapping away writing this when Henrik came by. Henrik is a Swedish sailor and a most interesting one. You wouldn’t believe it to look at him but he was born in 1975 which makes him 49 years old. 1975 was the Fall of Saigon – and Henrik was a Vietnamese orphan.

People of a certain age will remember this: The South Vietnamese capital was full of orphaned children, the offspring of American GIs and Vietnamese bar girls (think Miss Saigon). The rest of the world was terrified the Vietcong would murder them all.

Actually, Henrik has no American blood, but nobody knew that at the time. Nobody knew who his parents were, or even if he had a name. He was the youngest orphan to be airlifted out – just a few days old.

They sent him to Sweden where a factory worker and a kindergarten teacher adopted him and brought him up in a small town called Mariestad between Stockholm and Gothenburg. For most of his life, he worked for the council as a maintenance man. But something in his Southeast Asian genes was calling him to the sea.

Now he is in Aruba in an old boat painted up like a 1980s New York subway train, sailing along with the rest of us except he hasn’t got the money to go through the Panama Canal so he’s condemned to do another circuit of the Caribbean. Anyway, there he was walking back along the beach from his shopping trip, and he happened to have four cans of something called Balashi (born and brewed in Aruba).

To return the favour and to help with the Panama Canal kitty, I’m going to give him my old dinghy. I was planning to throw it in the Marina skip, but he swears he can sell it in Colombia.

Henrik and “Cordiellia”

 

One way and another, the laptop went back in the bag and as the sun dipped closer to the horizon, I began to wonder whether today might be the day I photograph the legendary green flash (I’ve only seen it once and that was before everybody had a smartphone in their pocket).

Once again, it didn’t happen, but I did get this shot of my neighbour from the next tree watching the same sunset from an even better vantage point.

And the Daily Chapter? Well, tomorrow is another day…

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Electric outboards

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Electric outboards are silent. Electric outboards require no maintenance. They are light, they don’t pollute, their “fuel” is free (providing the sun shines and the wind blows).

And yet I haven’t seen a single one in Spanish Water, this huge, land-locked harbour in Curacao.

There must be 200 boats at anchor here, waiting out the hurricane season. Their crews whizz back and forth to Uncle J’s the hamburger joint or the Fishermen’s dock where the courtesy bus picks up for the supermarket. Saturday morning is Zumba class on the beach, Sunday afternoon, Mexican Train Dominos…

You need an outboard in Spanish Water, and they all go flat out at all hours of day and night because RIBs with 9.9hp outboards work best going flat out – and who needs lights when all proper sailors can see in the dark?

And here is me in my little inflatable which deflates because I can’t find the leak – and I’m the only one who’s rowing.

Nobody can understand this. They keep offering to tow me in. It takes a lot of explaining.

Readers who have been with this blog from the beginning will know that when I had Largo in the 1980s, I had a two-stroke Suzuki 2hp which I used to pick up in one hand off the pushpit bracket, step over the rail holding it high in the air, climb into the dinghy still with it in one hand and slip it smoothly onto the transom.

So, when I bought Samsara in 2017, I found (eventually on eBay) another two-stroke 2hp Suzuki. Everything was the same. I had returned to my 30-something lifestyle.

In a 60-something body.

The big surprise was that I could barely lift a 2hp outboard in one hand. I certainly couldn’t wave it around while I climbed over the rail. I ended up having to lay it down on the deck and sort of shuffling it into the dinghy.

I did consider a derrick but you really need two people for those. In the end, I dumped it and bought what was called a “trolling motor” – a little electric job that weighed only 5kg (although you did need a 12kg lead-acid battery to make it go).

Nevertheless, I thought this was brilliant. I even made a little raft for it so I could lash it alongside and push the boat through those seemingly endless ocean calms. It didn’t work – I’m not sure I really expected it to. It tried to capsize as soon as I turned it on.

In the end, I sold it on eBay. I could row faster.

Besides, rowing is good for you. When the RIB drivers roar up alongside and offer to tow me the rest of the way, I puff out my chest and say: “It’s OK. If I don’t do this, I have to go to the gym!”

It’s true. My son the doctor tells me that, after the age of 75 (which the NHS categorizes as “late elderly”) you don’t make any more muscle. In fact, you have to work damn hard at holding onto what you’ve got left.

But I still hanker after an electric outboard.

I certainly hankered after one when I found myself rowing the two miles across the lagoon in Barbuda with a 15kt tradewind going the other way (it took an hour and 40 minutes).

It would be useful on those occasions when I have to carry passengers – like ferrying the family inside the volcano crater in the Azores – or Mohammed, the very large customs agent who navigated me through the Byzantine check-in procedure for the Gambia.

Now, with all the time in the world (and all the data on the Starlink Regional plan) I have started looking up electric outboards. I have even drawn up a spreadsheet with the pros and cons – which leads inevitably to long discussions over Uncle J’s little bottles of Heineken.

A Dutchman sought me out and tried to sell me his Mercury (I didn’t even know Mercury made an electric outboard). Apparently, it had been fine in the Med but the distances here are just too great. He couldn’t keep it charged – even with 1600 watts of solar…

So I’m back to square one.

Or not: The Slovenian company Remigo has offered me a discount on their version if I would like to give it some publicity. The point about the Remigo is that, although it weighs only 12kg, it has a range of 30 miles.

That’s right: 30 nautical miles at its lowest setting of 2kts.

And that got me thinking: OK, so I could whizz around at the five knots top speed for an hour but I would only be doing that in an emergency like having passengers on in the lagoon at Barbuda. The rest of the time I would be rowing anyway to make sure I still have some muscles to show off in selfies.

But the Remigo would really come into its own on an ocean crossing – in those calms that last all day: The sea dies down, the mainsail flops on the coachroof and, for 12 hours, the boat rolls her guts out in the swell that never sleeps.

If I had the right electric outboard, I could have a little bracket made for the transom and get the boat moving just fast enough to steady her – and I’d be making progress.

Marko at Remigo tells me they put one on a Halberg Rassey 42 and got it up to 3kts after a bit. Think of all those cruising boats that sail around with racks of diesel cans on the side decks to get them through the Doldrums…

I’ve got this vision of myself sitting in the shade with a cold beer wafting soundlessly into the next hemisphere.

I’ll let you know if it works out that way.