Friday, February 12, 2010

The Dinghy ride from hell...



February 10, 2010
Sunny Hi 70 Lo 59
Lat/Lon 24 33.3 N, 81 47.0 W

They’re here!

Sid’s son, Sean, and his girlfriend, Diane, are here from Bellingham, WA.

His daughter, Jessica, and her boyfriend, Padraig, are here from Dublin, Ireland.

Our time at the marina ran out at noon, so Sid and I moved the boat back out to the anchorage off Wisteria Key. The kids all stayed ashore and waited for us to dinghy back. Then we all spent the day wandering around Old Towne Key West together. It was fun. But by early afternoon, the wind really started picking up, and the temperature dropped. It became quite chilly. We all agreed to go back to the boat where it was warmer….

“ Day 29 of my captivity...
Those Fools!
Last night, my captors brought cohorts,(actually their offspring!), onboard the Mother Ship. Then today, for some strange, unknown reason, they left their offspring on shore and moved the Mother Ship away. Then they forced me to carry them back to the same shore they had just left. (I’m sure this futile exercise was just an attempt to humiliate me.) They left me all alone for several hours. During that time, the weather turned nasty, the water became rough, and I had plenty of time to plot some revenge...

The male captor forced me to make multiple trips across windy and very choppy water to shuttle them all back to the Mother Ship. On the first trip, I attempted to dig my bow into the choppy waves and splash the male captor and his offspring as much as I could. I managed to do a fairly good job of soaking their clothes. I showed them!

After seeing what I am capable of, the male captor thought he would try to outsmart me. Upon returning for the second load, he bagged up raingear for the remaining offspring and the female captor. They put on all the raingear,… pants, coats, and hoods. But then, the fools,… again thinking they’d outsmart me, loaded the 2 offspring into my bow, having them sit low, down on my floor, rather than up on the inflated sides.

They quickly learned that this simply made my bow sit lower in the water, and I was better able to dive my nose down into those choppy waves. In fact, I was able to HOLD my bow so low that water flowed up over the heads and shoulders of the offspring! Man, I was totally covering them in water! (My dinghy brethren would be proud!) I DRENCHED them!

As I filled with water, I sat even lower and even more water came in. I tried to hold in as much water as I possibly could. One of the offspring attempted to bail water as we went, but it was completely futile. I had perfected taking on water by this point! I filled up! It was like they were sitting in a bathtub! The water went up their pantlegs, inside their coats and down the inside their pants. HA! I may not be able to escape, but I can make them sorry they messed with me! WOW did I show them!”


As soon as we reached the boat, I had to rig up a couple of clothes lines in the cockpit, and everyone pretty much stripped right there before going below. (Thank god everyone took their Mother’s advice and wore clean underwear without holes!) We’d have been better off if Sid had brought us all swim suits rather than rain gear. But bless his sweet heart for trying!

Sean, who was in the first dinghy load, got some good pictures of the second dinghy load coming in. (But I can’t post them until he gets back to Bellingham to download them.) But they’re pretty funny. All you see is a white wall of foam, with a few bright colored hoods sticking out of it. You can’t even tell we were in a dinghy. There is NO sight of it! I will post those pics next week sometime.

3 comments:

Jodi said...

How many times do I have to tell you to stay away from the dinghy!

Dee said...

You could just as well have swam and not gotten any more wet. I'm sure ALL of your guests were good natured about it.

Damned Dingy !

Where was Bo all this time?

Linda said...

Oh yes, everyone was very good natured. We all had several good laughs! And Bo, well, he was in the front of that first dinghy ride. He was a pretty soggy doggy.