Lots has been happening to us with our new Morgan Classic 41.
She even has her own Facebook page! Check it out and click "LIKE" to be kept abreast of all the newest postings on the blog. Journey's Facebook page
Our new blog site is found here. Journey's new blog
There are lots of pages to explore there, so come on over and give us a look!

Al and I are pleased to announce the arrival of the newest member of our family, Journey. She is a Morgan classic 41. We will be putting her on the hard for some work next week, and I have started blogging on our new siteFollow the Journey:
Please follow us there, as I will start my usual blabbering as soon as we step onboard. In other news, we have somewhat successfully made the move to Florida. Another state to lay waste to. Journey must (sob) remain in NC for six months of exile to appease the Fl. tax gods. We will visit often, as we bond with her.

If we can all overlook the legalities of what constitutes ownership for a sec...... Wednesday I took future Journey out of her slip for the first time. It wasn't a very long cruise; nearly six minutes passed from the dropping of the lines to arrival in the center of the creek where we were to anchor for Earl's anticipated arrival. But for those six minutes, she was all mine! I learned that she handles very differently from old Journey, but she is thirteen feet longer. As I maneuvered for the next half hour or so that it took to set the two storm anchors, I learned the intricacies of welding a large wheel, instead of the tiller I have mastered. I am used to pointing the tiller where I want the bow to go in reverse. I had to relearn to turn the wheel in the direction I wanted the stern to go. Must have figured it out, as I didn't smush any other boats, and the anchors ended up right where Al wanted them. It's like a first kiss. I'll remember it forever, but the details are a little fuzzy because of the excitement of the moment. Fortunately, a friend took pictures to immortalize the event.

Back in 1973, I was out on the Withlacoochee River in Fl. It was one of those hot, lazy days on the river, fishing from a small Jon boat, with my then husband. (He's dead now, 2 out of 3 ex's have gone that route, it's not me, I swear!) I was around 7 months along with our first son, and we were in a side lagoon, fishing shiners with a bobber for bass. I had pulled in two, as well as 3 good size yellow perch.

I was just sitting in the sun, watching the bobber for activity, when a movement caught my eye. To the left and beyond where my bobber sat doing nothing, was a set of eyes, low in the water. Gator. Looked to be about a eight footer. I started pulling in my line, slowly. Mr. Gator decided to follow. I guess he wanted to check it out, who knows. I reacted by amping up the retrieval speed. It wasn't as fast as Gatorboy. Soon we were in the bobber-gator Olympics, me trying to bring in my gear before munch monster could grab hold.

Too late, I realized I was bringing a speed bomb of a gator right to the side of my boat. Oops. My nitwit of a husband decided to draw his pistol. And stand up. I yelled at him to sit down before he shot one of us or became a tasty treat for our new admirer. For once he listened to me. By now the gator miester was less than six feet from the side of the Jon boat, and showing no sign of slowing, or being aware that the boat was in front of him. He only had eyes for the escaping bobber. What to do/ what to do?

I jerked that rod up over my head as fast and hard as I could, ripping the bobber and shiner out of the water. I saw the shiner leave the hook and continue flying off into the void. Wonder what his last thoughts were? This still left a gator barreling down on me and the jon boat. He decided to follow the bobber - straight up in the air, working his massive body side to side, propelling him upwards, until he fell over backwards, splashing me to the bone, and rocking the boat so much that I dropped the rod and grabbed the gunnels in an effort to stay onboard. My husband dropped the pistol in the water during all this upheaval. I didn't lose the rod.

I began to shake a bit after all was said and done. Nerves, I'm sure. So many alternate scenarios started going through my head. My husband asked if I was cold, with an attitude; like he was reminding me what a hot day it was. I just glared at him, mostly because I knew my voice would shake if I spoke right then. He started going on about losing his pistol and that did it for me. I turned and asked him if he wanted to go in after it, 'cause if he did I'd be glad to help get him in the water. Then I suggested he crank up the outboard and take us to another area, 'cause I was about fished out here.

So much for a quiet day on the river.

Provided by hit counter website.

The day I learned that I had been a bad dingy operator started like any other. I had learned (so I thought) all the little nuances for starting and handling the dink from Al. We even had the verbal check list each time we went out. So far, I had done well. Al had to sit up front and so I was left to do the driving. Why, you may ask? Of course, no secrets among friends. The facts are that we had a small dink. At 7feet, 9 inches it sounds small enough. But then factor in that 16 of those inches were behind and outside the dink; in the form of the tube ends. Then our dink becomes really a 6foot, 5 inch dink. It gets smaller still when you figure in the extra 10 inches for the diameter of the front tubes. Now the dink is only a 5 foot, 7 inch dink. Since our tubes were small, whenever Al tried to sit on the back side tube to operate the outboard, the rear of the dingy would swamp. Maybe this wouldn't happen if we were small people, but hey, we like our meals super-sized. A hundred less pounds on the rear tube really made a difference, so I had to learn to be the dink driver.
As I had learned to from Al, I first would open the vent on the top of the tank, then throw the choke lever open and pull the crank handle. Vroom-vroom. We had taken the dink out for a few small trips just to test our skills, and check that the 3.5 HP outboard worked well. When I say small trips, I mean around 5-10 minutes in calm water at our marina. Then there was the 2 minute over-and -back solo that I did at Bimini to check us into the country. That was the extent of our dingy use, and my total learning curve.
So when we were asked to come over to another boat for our first ever sundowner event, I made up some pizza and enthusiastically jumped in the dingy. Al followed and we made the trip across the anchorage to our neighboring host boat. The tide was changing, and as sometimes happens, our boat had swung around, and theirs hadn't, so the trip was only around 200 yards. We made it fine, and had the great time one always reads about regarding these events. Life was good.
When we left, it was full dark, and finding the boat was done by the light of the sliver of moon in the sky. It sure looked a long way off. Oh, right, the tide had swung both boats by now so ours was a long way up current now. We climbed in the dink, went through the verbal check, fired up and left. The current really made our flat bottom dink work at getting back to the boat.
We were making slow steady progress when the outboard sputtered and died. The current grabbed hold of the dink without pause, and I tried pulling the cord to no avail. So I did what I thought was urgently called for in the situation, I grabbed hold of the oars and threw myself onto the floor of the dink and began to paddle for all I was worth. That got me wet from the water that resided in the bottom of the dingy. The current was a little, no, a lot more than I anticipated. I redoubled my efforts. We were losing ground, but I was determined, and slowly we started to gain on our boat.
Al asked if I wanted him to paddle. No, I could do this; I must do this, what if Al hadn't been around? I would have to do this, so I was going to by god do this. Our friends had heard the outboard die, and so had jumped in their dink and tore across the anchorage to give us a hand. I was fading fast, if not for stubbornness I would have taken the tow they freely offered. But by then I was a woman on a mission, and you don't mess with that if you know what's good for you. Inch by agonizing inch, I pulled that little dink closer to the mother ship. Finally Al was able to reach out and grab the stern rail. I was exhausted.
We thanked our friends and they gunned their outboard and left. Al and I wanted first to find out what was wrong with the outboard. With the flash in hand, he ran over the obvious, and stopped almost right away. "I thought I told you to open the vent on the top of the tank." "I did, see?" and showed as I closed it a quarter of a turn. "You need to open it three or four full turns, or it will stall for lack of fuel. You create a vacuum and no fuel can flow if you don't." "Oh," I said as I inspected my soaked shorts, "I was afraid if I opened it too far it would let water in." The bad dingy operator turned the vent open three full turns, pulled the rope, and Vroom-vroom. My clothes were soaked, my arms were as sore as they can get, and I was still slightly out of breath from the exertion. "You did a good job rowing back. I was really amazed!" Al said as he killed the outboard. "Yah," I replied, "that current was really strong." Poof! No more bad dingy operator. Al should have been a diplomat.