Yesterday, our major goal was to check out our dingy and dingy motor. A dingy is what we use to go to shore when we are anchored. It's kind of like our car, so it is an important piece of equipment to us once we start traveling. The dingy has a hard bottom with inflatable tubes around it. It hangs off of davits on the back of our boat and is easily lowered into the water when we want to use it. Since we first looked at the boat, it has been partially deflated. And the motor looks very beat up and had not been started for a long time, so we were not sure what we had. Well, we lowered it in the water and pulled it up the dock to blow some air into it. I got a bottle of soapy water and sprayed it around all of the seams, and to our surprise, there is was no bubbles! Next we got the motor down and put it on the back of the dingy and got out the fuel tank. On closer inspection of the fuel tank, it needed replacement, so after quick trip to West Marine, we had a new tank and hose. We filled up the tank and plugged it in. To our amazement, the engine roared to life after just 4 pulls on the cord. HORRAY!! Today we will shine it up and our neighbor offered to help me fiberglass the cowling so water does not get in the engine.

Today's job is getting the fuel tank put back in. And once that is done we get the aft cabin put together and start working on getting the starboard hull cleaned up. Karen is scraping the old name off the boat and we ordered the new name this morning.

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