Over the weekend Sabrina and I ran the dinghy out to visit friends on the hook. On our way out, I remarked that we seemed a lot slower than usual. I theorized that the outboard carburetor might need be cleaned, or the bottom of the dinghy might need to be cleaned.
On Monday, I used the dinghy to wash the topsides, but now the outboard was running very roughly. I thought it might have had water in the fuel. Monday night when we came back into the marina I quickly realized that one spark plug wasn’t firing. I then cleaned the carburetor while I had the motor open. After putting the engine back together, it was running a lot better, and I excitedly ran out to see if that fixed the speed issue. Sadly, it did not, I was maybe 10% faster, but nowhere near as fast as we used to be.
Tuesday Sabrina and I pulled the dinghy out to clean it on deck. I knew the bottom was going to be rough, but I didn’t expect what I found. It looked like matted down shag carpet, with barnacles mixed in! The first time I tried to use a brush to clean the shag, I was more combing than cleaning….
So, I spent the better part of Tuesday scraping barnacles and painstakingly removing their bases. It was very hard work, and required ample amounts of elbow grease. At the end I was pleased with my progress, the dingy looks great.
Hopefully by addressing both suspected issues we’ll return to our expected speed. Our maybe even faster?
Stop playing with your Dinghy and get sailing 🙂
… Couldn’t resist….
I guess I should have seen that one coming 🙂
Haha, thats funny! On a serious note, thats one step closer to departure time 🙂
Departure time is really close, we’re thinking tomorrow at 2:40 p.m. to catch the tide through the Delaware Bay. The wind keeps getting better offshore, I’m hoping tomorrow morning it improves a little bit, and then we should have a great sail north. We’re trying to finish up things today, and then get some rest before we try to run around the clock. Not long now!
What Shannon said!
So the dirty waterline on your dinghy was only the tip of iceberg, or in this case, the tip of excessive bottom growth. I’m telling you we need to install a hydraulic platform lift on that boat, will solve the problem. Actually need to find the link, I saw a sailboat that had one.
Yeah, I was really happy that I didn’t look further under the bottom while we were out on Saturday, it would have just bummed me out. I’d love to see a hydraulic platform on a sailboat, forward that link if you find it.
We just finished putting all the rivets into the bimini frame, it’s strong enough that we could probably just hang the dinghy off the bimini frame!
Wow, tomorrow! Thats awesome!! Wishing you fair winds and following seas. I will be looking forward to reading your blog posts as you travel North.
Thank you, and thanks for following along! It looks like now it will be very early on the 10th. We think we’re heading out at 3 a.m. tomorrow morning to catch the tide.