THE Other BOAT

These four dinghies have features and options that can add safety and fun to any mothership.

- ANDREW PARKINSON

A board our 31-foot Hunter, Ragtime, our dinghy was the unsung hero of our cruising escapades. It was always the first thing we deployed upon arrival to a destination, and it was the last thing we packed away before we departed. It was our family Ford, our Honda for the harbor, our Miata of the marina (I'll see myself out...).

To the untrained eye, a dinghy might appear to be no more than a floating dock cart to tote provisions, pets and people. But as cruisers well know, it's so much more.

A dinghy is an all-access pass to exploring new coves and reaching short-water fishing spots. It's a recon vessel for scouting surrounding depth, seafloor terrain and on-shore amenities. And, of course, it's an escape pod should all hell break loose. A dinghy also provides endless amounts of fun, and even some boat handling education, for the kiddos.

Ragtime's dinghy was a 9-foot-6-inch Achilles with a 4 hp Mercury outboard. For 13-year-old me, it allowed a real taste of freedom. We named it Cascade (after Scott Joplin's jubilant rag "The Cascades"). I can still feel the elation of hopping in the dink after dropping the hook in a new port of call and then roaming around the harbor, checking out neighboring boats, scouring the shallows for marine life. When there were no other boats around and the no-wake zones approved of it, I'd tear off on plane in a puff of sea spray to an imagined finish line across the bay.