In the April issue you solicited points of view about the merits of hard dinghies versus inflatables — "those puffy Hypalon things ... Have the merits of the old standby hard dinghy been forgotten?" Henry V could not have been more eloquent at Agincourt, pumping up the outnumbered English to fight the French! This heartfelt poetry leads me to describe our (prosaic) experience with both choices over the past eight years.

We live in Maryland, where the inflatable dinghy is the functional equivalent of the '60s VW Beetle: cheap, small, and ideal for less romantic chores. Like the head, it rarely gets featured in the glossy sailing magazines, nor does it engender a band of brothers based upon pride in "the rowability and good looks of a conventional tender."

We never thought much about it until we decided to move up to a larger and much better boat, built by Morris Yachts of Bass Harbor, Maine. The choice between a hard versus an inflatable tender was ours without any bending of arms, but nevertheless we got the impression that the hard dinghy might be preferable on grounds of ruggedness. Well, we thought, this is Maine, where sailing is tougher, and they must have a good reason for this preference. Since we intended to do a good part of our sailing up there, we promptly opted for just that.

This led to the question: Where are we going to carry this 100+ pound craft? We pretty quickly discarded the possibility of just dragging it along behind us offshore in the Atlantic, so the builder crafted a three-chock system mount on the foredeck, with the dinghy inverted, its bow resting forward, and the stern atop the coachroof. With sufficient elbow grease, swearing, and time, it was possible to lash it down securely. Then we noticed that the aft portion of the dinghy, so secured, limited opening of the forward overhead hatch to approximately two vertical inches, and cut its airflow to virtually nothing. This wasn't a problem in Maine, but in the summer Chesapeake and the Caribbean, it surely would erode quality of life.

So, you might say, just shift the dinghy from the foredeck to the water when arriving in port, and pick it up when ready to leave. To do this, deck to water, required (1) unstrapping and righting the dinghy; (2) hoisting it (via spinnaker halyard and three-lead bridle) to a height sufficient to clear the lifelines; and (3) lowering the dinghy to the water. Its return involved the same maneuvers in reverse.

In perfectly quiet surroundings, at anchor, these maneuvers could be considered feasible, although time consuming. But with wind, and/or chop, we found we had a 100-pound dangling mass with sail effect oscillating according to its own malign agenda, seemingly eager to pitch one or both of us over the side. On days like that, we were reminded of the work of another Marylander, Edgar Allan Poe: "The Pit and the Pendulum."

Needless to say, we switched back promptly to the inflatable, and have found it quite satisfactory for tender duty as far south as Grenada, and as far east as Nova Scotia. When we are ready to go offshore, it is packed in the sail locker or lashed between the overhead hatches on the main cabin coachroof, obstructing no airflow, and threatening no sailor. It may not come up to "traditional New England aesthetics," but it certainly improves our enjoyment of in-port time!