Probably most of us learned to sail in a dinghy. They make an ideal first boat as they are cheap to buy and to keep up. They do not need to be kept on a mooring or in a marina, but can be kept in the garden at home, trailed behind a normal family car and launched into the water anywhere there is a suitable slipway. Once they're in the water they are light and responsive, which makes them good to learn the skills of sailing, and they are just the job for those early expeditions under sail, exploring a lake or an estuary, while you gradually gain confidence in your abilities.

But eventually messing about sheltered waters begins to pall. As you gain more experience the urge comes to go on a real voyage, a venture down the coast or out to an offshore island. This is when most people sell the dinghy and buy a real yacht with a cabin and space for berths, toilets, a cooker, VHF, GPS and all the other trimmings that are deemed essential these days for cruises out of sheltered waters. Even the shortest sea passage makes a simple weekend sail far more vivid and purposeful, but it seems a pity to give up all the advantages of a dinghy just for that. Some of us have been sailing for years, yet we have never made this seemingly inevitable step to 'something with a lid on'. We simply do our cruising in the dinghy.

Epic ocean crossings by the likes of Frank Dye in his Wayfarer have popularised dinghy cruising, and also given it a rather macho image. But you don't need to be either superhuman or inured to physical discomfort to cruise in a dinghy. There are a number of septuagenarians in the Dinghy Cruising Association who regularly make coastal passages in their small open dinghies - and even sleep aboard under canvas at the end of the day. In fact the average week in and week out type of cruising that most people do is perfectly within the capacity of a decent dinghy. Most of the time most yachts are only used for day sails and the odd night away, and not for long distance overnight passages, and a seaworthy open boat is probably better adapted for this sort of cruising than a yacht. You may not be able to go quite as far in a day as a bigger yacht, but the same pleasures of navigation and boat craft, of working out the tides, of watching the weather and of bringing your craft safely to a landfall at the end of the day are still present. But the great advantage of a dinghy is when you have sailed all day to your destination, you do not need to sit out in a crowded deep water anchorage with all the other yachts, or have to raft up to a visitors mooring or even be stuck cheek by jowl with other yachts in a marina. Even in the most crowded sailing waters there are miles of quiet creeks and swatchways that a dinghy can wriggle into, away from the crowds.

A cruising dinghy is an admirably suitable vessel for an adventurous young person who wants to explore the coast on a limited budget. For families it provides a sailing experience that is usually much more interesting and involving for children than simply sitting on a yacht as it slogs for hours to windward. And if the passage to your chosen sailing waters seems too long or exposed, you can always trail your boat there. Even the smallest dinghy can manage a Channel crossing if it does it inside a car ferry.

Dinghy sailors tend to eschew anything natty or fancy because there is not the space, and they are too busy sailing to worry about flag etiquette or whether the fenders have got their socks on. Our modest craft are a reaction against the consumer culture that has sadly afflicted modern sailing. We reject the ostentatiousness and the waste of modern sailing: all those blobs of white fibreglass that rattle their idle lives away in the marinas, all those yachts in the Solent that go everywhere under power with just their mainsail set, and all those catalogues of nick-nacks that drop out of yachting magazines. We want to recapture a purer and simpler type of sailing, just a simply equipped boat and a small crew going about their business on great waters.

The owners of cruising dinghies are just as unlikely to admit the failings of their vessels as the next boatman, and the pages of the Dinghy Cruising Association's quarterly bulletin are often dominated by fierce arguments between the aficionados of different types of craft. There are those who swear by modern production boats like Wayfarers, Wanderers and Drascombes. Other experienced dinghy cruisers design their own craft, so they can include special features like the ability to self-right after a knock down. A third group will take a standard production hull and completely re-rig and refit it for cruising.

Personally I would always go for a simple boat, something straightforward and without frills. The dinghy I cruise in is a traditional clinker-built wooden twelve footer, built by L. H. Walker of Leigh-on-Sea in 1958, an early example of his 'Tideway' class dinghies, which he continued to build until the mid-seventies. Baggywrinkle has all the virtues of a traditional hull form - firm bilges, a good freeboard and no rocker on the keel. These features mean that unlike a skittish modern racing dinghy she will heave-to quietly, sail herself for hours with the tiller lashed and make to windward even with the plate up. Also there is something admirably sturdy and honest about a small traditionally built open boat like this. They have a directness, a lack of show and a natural relationship with the sea that they share with fishing craft and other working boats. When I sail into an anchorage I never envy the owners of larger yachts, (well, not unless it is particularly cold and wet), but I do not think that it just fancy that I notice something wistful in the way they look at my small craft as I sail between them and on into some lonely creek for the night?

If I am being brutally honest I have to admit that Baggywrinkle can be a little cramped when two of us sleep on board under canvas. If you regularly sail two up a fourteen or sixteen footer would probably be a more suitable choice. But Baggy is the ideal size for sailing single handed. Large dinghies can be a frightening things to sail in a strong wind, but I am confident in my ability to keep Baggywrinkle sailing in any conditions I am likely to be out in. She is also small enough to perform well under oars, and easy to launch and recover single-handed on her winched trailer. Manoeuvrability out of the water is as important to a cruising dinghy as performance in. Too many people are conned into buying so-called trailer-sailers that turn out too cumbersome to handle ashore, and so they end up on a mooring. But if your dinghy is too heavy to launch and recover with her usual crew, why not go the whole hog and buy a yacht?

The crews of racing dinghies expect to capsize frequently, and think nothing of it, but a capsize in a lightweight racer on a reservoir, when there is a rescue boat to hand and a warm clubhouse nearby, is not at all the same as righting and then baling out a laden cruising dinghy in a heavy sea, far from any shelter or assistance. So you should choose a boat that is sea kindly and stable, and she should be rigged so that the sail area can be adjusted for the prevailing wind and sea conditions, but remains simple way to get afloat.

All the fittings must be robust and chunky, as a gear failure far from home could easily be dangerous, so replace any flimsy fittings with beefy ones from the sort of chandlery that stocks equipment for work boats. Everything on a cruising dinghy should be straightforward and simple, so that it can be operated by the gloved hands of a tired crew at the end of a long day.

A cruising dinghy must carry stout ground tackle. Notwithstanding the extravagant claims of modern anchors I find that the only way to ensure a sound night's sleep is the knowledge that I've got plenty of weight on the sea bed. Baggywrinkle has a ten pound plough anchor shackled to two metres of chain and 30 metres of nylon warp. Another 30 metre warp is kept coiled in the stern locker just in case. If I had a larger boat I might also ship an outboard when cruising, but sleeping with an engine on a twelve footer is a pain. The smell of oil and petrol gets everywhere, and the piece of machinery always seems to be in the way. Anyway rowing is a perfectly efficient way of getting along. The reason people have come to believe that rowing is a chore is that oars are generally too short these days - on my twelve footer the oars are 8 foot long. Teach yourself the age old techniques of manoeuvring a sea boat under oars, of effective rowing in a chop and how to scull with one oar over the stern. Then those frantic lunges at a jetty with a screaming outboard can become a thing of the past, and you at least will not be shattering the silence of a peaceful anchorage.

It is staggering how much stuff has to be stashed away in the compact confines of your little vessel. And if she ships as much water as mine does when plugging into short steep seas, then you'll need to ensure that your gear can withstand being submerged under several inches of salt water. I find those study waterproof bags with turn down tops to be particularly useful. When lashed down low they also provide extra buoyancy in the event of a swamping.

As in bigger boats, the trick is to have a place for everything and shock cords or tiers to keep it all in place. A good basic rule is also to keep heavy items away from the bow and stern as much as possible, or your buoyant vessel will turn into a cussed thing that plunges straight through the waves.

Route planning requires the same concentration as navigating a larger yacht except that your speed through the water is slower and arranging for a fair tidal stream is even more important. You will find that standard pilot books tend to put in all the marinas or deep water anchorages instead rather than all the nice secluded creeks you are interested in. This is why seasoned dinghy cruisers often navigate on an OS map when close inshore. The larger scales usually include more detail than the chart and they also show the position for the high and low water marks, but as they are unconcerned about underwater obstructions, buoys and the like, do make sure you carry a chart as well!

A compass is another vital piece of equipment. Obviously it must be gimballed and mounted in full view of the helm, but achieving this and keeping it away from ferrous metal can be difficult in the confines of a small dinghy, especially if she has a steel centre plate. I have a grid compass mounted on the front of the stern seat, and I can dial in the selected course so I don't have to remember it. It is surprising how easy it is for it to slip your memory when you have important things like eating and drinking coffee to attend to as well as your steering.

My chart table is simply a sheet of ply cut to the size of a quarter-folded Admiralty chart. The chart itself is kept in a cut down chart case fastened to the plywood 'table' with shock cord. I always mark up the courses for the day on the transparent surface of the chart case in chinagraph pencil, together with any necessary notes about pilotage and the tide, so that they can be readily referred to whilst under way.

At first either take a tent, or for real minimal cruising use a B&B for your night's sleep. Eventually you will probably find it more convenient to sleep aboard, and you will need some sort of camping cover. Most people make their own, and there are various patterns to chose from exotic framed edifices and hi-tech hooped confections, to simple canvas ridge tents like mine. Just make sure that it is easy to put up and that it can all be done from inside the boat. It is also worth ensuring that you can still row the boat with the tent up, as it is a pain having to take it all down just to shift your anchorage slightly.

On larger dinghies people usually sleep directly on the bottom boards either side of the centreboard case, but on my twelve footer I lift the floor boards up to create a sleeping platform at thwart level. This provides a nice level sleeping surface unconstrained by the centreboard case. Padding is provided by those wonderfully convenient self-inflating mattresses. I have also leant from hard experience that comfy cushions are a must! They take up a lot of space in a small boat, but they do make all the difference to your relaxation at the end of a long day sitting on an unyielding thwart.

If you carry enough provisions to be independent of the shore for a couple of nights or so, you will not be not limited to civilised destinations with chip shops and you can venture into the remotest drying river. At the end of the day you drift slowly up to the head of a lonely creek carrying the last of the flood. As the light fades you lower the sails and row her in to a suitable looking anchorage. By the time the cover is up, and your evening meal is bubbling away on the stove, the ebbing tide is already settling your craft onto the sand for the night. Soon you'll be able to walk ashore for a postprandial stroll or a walk to the pub for a well-earned pint.