Also on the market

Minicat 420

The bigger sister of the MiniCat Guppy, the 420 is a larger and more complex boat.

As such she should sail better and comes with a furling headsail as well as a larger mainsail.

She has been designed to sail with one or two onboard.

The manufacturers claim it is 52kg total weight across two bags.

The 420 can also come with an engine mount making the sailing dinghy a more viable tender.

Price: £3,595

Tribord 5S

The Tribord 5S is a compact inflatable boat from French sports brand, Decathlon, that packs down into two bags.

It is clearly designed for the fun-sailing-for-kids end of the spectrum and is not dissimilar to the Tiwal boats in that the hull is broadly a large standup paddleboard.

It has inflatable tubes to create a semblance of a cockpit.

The mast is stabilised through standing rigging attached to the inflatable hull, so you would expect limited stiffness in the rig, which may be detrimental to sailing performance.

Available from £2,100

Banana-Boot

Popular in Germany and in a few other areas of Europe, the Banana-boot is a folding boat, not dissimilar to the Seahopper in style.

The hull is made from plastic and 
it folds flat, though retains its 3.2m length.

As with the Seahopper this would probably make storage below unlikely on all but the biggest cruisers but it would happily sit up on deck when folded with the oars and rigging stored below.

Prices start from £2,548

First published in the September 2019 edition of Yachting Monthly.