Another big maintenance item we are working on is the boat's tender. We have two small boats that we use to get from boat to shore while at anchor, and on other explorations while in port. One is a folding hard plastic, a Porta-Bote, which is now 8 years old and has seen some hard use. It is now less than sea-worthy, so we turned our attention to our inflatable dinghy, a 15-year old Achilles. One side no longer held air, so Larry has been working on patches for days now. The result is not pretty, but surprisingly, it is holding up for now.
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| In the water, holding air - and it floats! |
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| A sorry mess of patches upon patches |
We are finally almost done with the dinghy-patching, only one left to attend to. To power the dinghy, our 15-year-old Mercury 3.5 HP motor was more trouble than it was worth. Its carburetor is held together with marine epoxy, and starts only when taken apart and put back together. So we bought a new Nissan 3.5 HP motor, almost exactly the same as the old one. The pluses of this motor are many - its weight, about 25 pounds, means that either one of us can lift it and carry it. It is a very simple motor, and we know how to rebuild the carburetor and do all of the necessary maintenance on it. It is a 2-stroke, which means it is a much simpler engine than the 4-strokes sold in the U.S. So we purchased a brand new motor:
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| New Nissan motor |
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| Dinghy and motor |
We may be buying a new dinghy when we return to Florida, but we want this one to see us through the trip there. It's got a lot of life left in it, it appears.
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