Mirror Sailing Dinghy

The Mirror Sailing Dinghy is a very small, but successful dinghy that has had more than 70,000 boats sold. It is only 3.3m and weighs only 45.5kg

It was designed by a man called Jack Holt in 1962 and was named after a successful, working class UK newspaper called Daily Mirror and was portrayed as an affordable boat for all.

It is manufactured using marine plywood held together by copper stitching and fibreglass tape and four chambers in the hull achieve buoyancy.

It was also designed to be easily built with little experience so that boat enthusiasts could built their own boat by themselves.

The boat looks quite odd, because of its 'pram' front, where it seems as if part of the boat has been sawn off. In fact this 'pram' front, reduces the need for curved wood and the bits and pieces need to join them together, further making this boat simple to build.

Also a dagger board is used instead of a classic hinged centreboard, to reduce again the need for boat building expertise.

The boat is usually sailed by two older children or young teenagers wanting to learn how to sail, because it would be quite cramped for two adults.

It has a mainsail, a small gib and a spinnaker. You can reduce this configuration to just a mainsail, by moving the mast forward, but this makes it difficult to tack, so most single handlers simply use a gib as it is so easy to move it across and does not require that much strength.

I think it is quite a nice dinghy, but I think the 'pram' front, makes it look a bit odd and unsexy compared to the gleaming hull of a GP14 and it is also not particularly fast - and so not great for racing, but very good for cruising with your children.

One of my friend's owns a mirror at the harp and she has yet to take me for a sail in it on the Harp, but I have sailed in them before and found them quite cramped for two people (then again I am not a young teenager).