There! It’s done! I’ve ordered a new dinghy and an outboard to go with it.

Actually, I rather hope the outboard – the electric outboard – is going to do more than just go with the dinghy. But more about that in a moment.

The first thing to acknowledge is when to admit your mistakes – and the little True Kit Stowaway dinghy was definitely a mistake. I got all enthusiastic when I wrote about it from Aruba but since then it’s been a disaster.

Oh, it’s easy to row – the clever catamaran design keeps it mostly out of the water so it just skims along the surface with the minimum of effort.

Yet there are still three drawbacks – all of them catastrophic.

1. It takes ages to blow up because you have to fit and partially inflate the floor and then switch back and forth between the air chambers as it all comes together (and then do it all again because you forgot to the seat and the valve caps got trapped underneath.)
2. Because the Stowaway does not have a solid transom (and therefore cannot take an outboard) it doesn’t have a self-bailer either. Until now, I had no idea how much water comes aboard a dinghy in a stiff headwind – it just drained out again. With this, the water was over my ankles. The shopping was underwater – and I had the devil’s own job turning the whole thing upside down afterwards to empty it out.
3. The rowing position is upright with your feet flat on the floor rather than leaning back and bracing against the transom. This means the rower sits directly on the bones of their pelvis rather than their comfortable fleshy buttocks (well mine are comfortable and fleshy). The result was a saltwater sore on the bum which wouldn’t go away until I stopped rowing completely.

So, I have ordered a 3D SuperLight TwinAir. I have had two of these in the past and they’ve been brilliant – apart from one small and important detail: The rowlocks fall to pieces in no time at all. Obviously, the makers don’t expect anyone to row their product. I had to have stainless inserts made to replace the plastic parts and then sewed the rubber together when it split. This time I shall sew it as soon as I get it…

But the biggest development is that I shall no longer be rowing those long hard passages against the wind. Did you read what happened during the two miles against the Tradewind in Barbuda?

It’ll put a link at the end.

Anyway, I have now ordered a RemigoOne electric outboard. I was turned on to the idea of electric by Steve and Judy on the Sailing Fair Isle YouTube channel. We met in the Canaries and then again in Grenada and Aruba. They were given an ePropulsion 1.0 Evo (and then the company’s little Elite model for comparison). But then they do have 72,000 subscribers.

I didn’t want an ePropulsion because this is about more than getting ashore in the dinghy. I want an electric motor that will propel Samsara through those big ocean calms that can last for 24 hours and more.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve nothing against going nowhere – I can sit in the cockpit with a good book for as long as you like. It’s the rolling I can’t stand.

My theory is that if the boat is moving through the water – even at just a knot or two – the keel will stop acting as a pendulum which only increases the rolling, but instead will convert the forward motion into lateral resistance as it is supposed to do. This in turn means the sails will stop shaking out any wind that gets into them and a couple of knots through the water might be translated into a couple of knots of apparent wind – which might then increase the forward motion even more so that I can throttle right back and, according to the specifications, one charge of the Remigo will keep me going for twelve hours.

And the RemigoOne – unlike the ePropulsion Evo – is designed to go on the back of a yacht (admittedly a small one. They specify 8m and 1.5t.) Samsara is a bit chunkier than that. All the same, it must have some effect, surely…

Something else to think about is that an outboard on the back of a yacht in an ocean swell could very well get dunked in the water. The Remigo is completely waterproof. It doesn’t even have a twist-grip on the tiller. I reckon I can get a stainless steel fitting made up for the transom and just lean over and slot it on and off when I need it.

The more I think about this, the more exciting it sounds. Remember the time I had to get alongside in English Harbour in Antigua and the diesel would only run for four minutes on what I could pour into the filter from a can. It was a calm day, I bet a Remigo would have managed that.

Also, the Remigo has a remote control – after all, you don’t want to have to scramble over the back of the boat to stop it…

Then there’s the matter of fuel. Currently, I’m in the San Blas Islands of Panama – people stay here for years but no matter how self-sufficient they may claim to be with their watermakers and spear guns, they still need diesel and there isn’t any. You have to sail 40miles to the marina at Linton Bay to fill up. Imagine how fantastic it would be to just plug your motor into the big folding solar panel and top up for nothing?

And no maintenance: Everybody here has two strokes because of the power-to-weight ratio. But you know how ticklish they are to keep running – and how noisy and smelly…

I’m not even planning to use the motor on the dinghy all the time. Rowing is still my chosen form of exercise – that and walking along white sand beaches to bars made of bamboo with palm-frond roofs to keep the sun off the beer.

But sometimes an outboard would be useful – and the Barbuda escapade isn’t the only instance. Out here there are plenty of places where it’s half a mile to the shore and even in a dinghy with a self-bailer, you can still get very wet sitting up on the seat and rowing into 20knots.

Cowering at the back of a dinghy next to a 3hp outboard will raise the bow and keep the spray where it belongs.

Best of all, the RemigoOne isn’t made in China like everything else, but in Slovenia – and I’m very keen on all things European.

As far as I can tell, there is only one downside. The nice folks in Ljubljana have given me a discount in return for any publicity I can drum up – and although they fully expect me to give an honest opinion, they have made some polite suggestions – a blog post about unpacking it, first impressions and so on. All the same, I can’t help feeling that real publicity means YouTube.

I do have a YouTube channel. Amazingly, it has 2,000 subscribers (10,000 on Instagram – heaven knows why. I never go near it because it’s full of adverts). Anyway, it does rather put my 959 blog subscribers into perspective

 Steve and Judy on Fair Isle worked in television. They know what to do. I bought a GoPro and was so frightened of the online instructions, I put it back in the box and haven’t dared to try it since. Besides, my son Hugo might come back soon. He filmed the “Tour of my Rival 32” – and that racked up 17,000 views.

On the other hand, now that I am officially a freeloader, I do feel a certain obligation – and I’m just sitting here in the sun, waiting for everything to arrive. What else have I got to do?

Meanwhile, those links:

Using an electric outboard to propel a yacht: https://www.oldmansailing.com/electric-outboards/

A long way to row in Barbuda: https://www.oldmansailing.com/a-long-way-for-a-lost-hat/

The RemigoOne electric outboard

https://remigo.eu/

Also, you can see some video of the Stowaway in action on the oldmansailing YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@oldmansailing

Update March 2nd 2025

The new 3D dinghy has arrived (a white one this time) and I started changing the plastic inserts for the rowlocks – only to find they have changed the design. Whether this is as a result of my endless complaining in Googletranslate French, I cannot say. But now the 8mm plastic tube which used to break in no time at all, is a meaty 20mm fitting which seems to be part of the rubber moulding. It certainly doesn’t seem capable of movement – and I very much doubt I could get it out if I wanted.

I hope this means that the moulding itself will not flex – in which case it will not break and there is no need to sew in reinforcing as I had planned to do on the day it arrived.

If, they have indeed solved the problem, then I believe the 3D TwinAir Superlight, at 2.3m and 13kg is indeed the perfect dinghy.