Day 314, Year 8: The Dinghy Blues
Date: Friday, September 13, 2013
Weather: Another Beautiful Day
Location: Eel Pond, Woods Hole, Massachusetts
Our dinghy, Little Bird as Sam calls it, has been with the dinghy repairman for over a week now. He called today with news we didn’t want to hear. He still can’t find the leak, has called in a friend who is also a dinghy repairman, and he can’t find the leak either. They both think the leak is in the seam. As a last resort they sprayed something into the tubes that should seal a leak from the inside, but we are feeling a little uncomfortable heading south with a dinghy that could be impossible to keep inflated. We use our dinghy like a pick-up truck to cart things to and from Windbird, and we take her out on long adventures to go to the best snorkeling or fishing spots. I love our current dinghy and am going to have serious withdrawal if we have to get rid of her, but that looks like the case. So now we feel like we need to go to the Newport Boat Show tomorrow to see what is available there. What a hassle after making the two trips to Defender earlier this week. Defender has one dinghy that might work for us, but it is certainly not as good as what we currently have. Their boat show prices are not much better than their regular warehouse prices, but there is a slight price break—just not enough to pay for the fuel for all these trips to Rhode Island. We’ll make the trip tomorrow and then probably have to go back on another day to pick up a dinghy if we do buy one. We’re going to go to Jonah’s first soccer practice before we take off, but that is at 9 am and we will be on the road by 10 o’clock. Jonah has watched Sam at soccer practice for two years now and has been so anxious to be 4 years-old so he can play, too. Tomorrow is his day.
Mark and I helped with drop-off and pick-up of Sam today as Jed had to take the 7 am bus to Boston. Sam was so excited because he was having his first spelling test. When I pick him up he was beaming. He got a 100%. Congratulations, Sam. After school, we took Sam with us to Walmart to look for moth traps. After our hours of cleaning on Wednesday, there are still moths, so trapping them would be a good idea. But our Walmart had nothing. I had read on the internet that you can use fish oil to attract them and fly paper to catch them. I told Sam this and he suggested we try to make traps using double stick tape. Sounded like a decent idea to me, so we went to CVS and bought fish oil vitamin capsules and tape. Sam was so excited to be able to build these traps himself. Now we just have to hope they work.
