The Great Dinghy Walkabout

3:15am February 29th BooBooTinTin was missing!  Seems he needed a Margarita and a Cheeseburger, probably in that order too, for a late night snack. The Margarita part must have been repeated several times since he never found his way home.  A scan of the harbor with a very bright LED light showed a reflection off in the mangroves.  I assumed he had just taken a rod and was night fishing (yes the dinghy all by it's self)  so I returned below and tried to sleep until sun rise.  LOL  You know how it is when you kids are out late with the car?  Just imagine when the car is out alone and you can not go anywhere with out it.  So after tossing and turning and staring out of the companion way for over 3 hours it was light.  Through the binoculars it was confirmed,  BooBooTinTin was definitely in the mangroves but he wasn't fishing but looking more hungover tucked under the branches.

Arrow shows location where BooBooTinTin spent the night

I flagged another dinghy down as it passed by and tried to get a rescue going on but THAT dinghy had pressing business and just kept on going with a "sorry".  As I stood in the cockpit thinking "Fins and snorkel"  I saw another dinghy waking from the night before.  With coffee in hand and a smile the second dinghy spearheaded a rescue attempt and we were off.  When we got over to BooBooTinTin the water was too skinny for the motor and we had to row the big inflatable across the silt covered flat.  We finally made contact and lead BooBooTinTin out of the muck.  Without so much as a "Sorry for staying out all night" or even "I ran out of gas" comment he is all back at home.  And he is grounded for 3 months!

During the time BooBooTinTin was missing it gave me time to run the numbers of the impact a "LOST" dinghy would impact to the budget cruiser.  The cheapest replacement I could find in the crunch would be over $300,  to completely replace what was lost is over $1500 and a "new" upgrade around 3K.  Not an acceptable mistake in securing the dinghy!

Thanks Gill for saving the day!

I would like to thank Gill from m/v Suits Us for taking me out to fetch our dinghy that slipped away in the night.  He was telling me of a dream his wife had just up the west coast of them loosing their dinghy into the vast blue of the Gulf of Mexico.  Maybe she was foreseeing the events of today.

Oh and I just found out that a restore on our computer just deleted Turbotax and the return I had ready to file.  So now I am reentering all the data instead of heading out to Key Largo!  Damn!  And now the internet is acting up!  Oh well, i could be at work.

BAD DINGHY!
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