We were busily enjoying a 'pot luck' dinner aboard the catamaran SV School's Out while penned in by weather at Island Head Creek. After a fun night and much re-telling of our overseas cruising adventures, it was time to go home as we were preparing to leave the following morning for the 60nm southward journey to Great Keppell Island. We walked onto the starboard hull as Ros the host started pulling our dingy's painter to find that there was no resistance to our red line...there was no dingy attached to it. Disaster.
 |
| Where the dingy would be...unfortunately just a chaffed through line now swung |
The dingy is, like many other items essential to cruising. How else do you get from your boat to shore? Swimming is rarely an option, especially if you want to be sociable at the other end or when the waterway is patrolled by crocs and jellyfish.
Avid readers would recall the loss of 'The Krissy I' complete with outboard in week 2 of our cruising adventure, a terrible loss due to a wayward knot when the dingy was tied to the boat. After that we bought 'The Krissy II', a PVC soft bottom inflatable from a bloke in Yamba, which turned out to be quite inappropriate in the tropics and the weekly application of 5200 glue couldn't hold that thing together after 5 months of use. Some cruising friends of ours and their kids affectionately referred to our dingy as 'the pool'. After that we were fortunate to be gifted a hypalon dingy from some cruiser friends who were retiring it from their use. This dingy came pre-named as 'Maxx' and turned out to have aged more than its previous owners knew and unlikely to last much longer. So that left us in Phuket, month 7 of our adventure and we were presented with a brand new fibreglass hard-bottom and hypalon pontoon dingy that was just the right size and just the right weight for our boat. We snapped it up and together with a new 15hp outboard, we were finally in the business of getting from A to B in comfort (ie, somewhat dry) and speed. We even filled it up with diving gear and dived off it with success. We had become somewhat attached to 'The Krissy III' as she had lasted with us for almost a full calender year and was in superb condition considering the tough life afforded to plastics and glues in the relentless tropical heat.
So as the feeling of dread rolled over me about the potential loss of our beloved runabout, we turned to our company for help. Thankfully we were amongst a group of able fishermen who loved taking their fully kitted out tenders (ie. tinnies with 20hp+ engines compete with seats and full safety gear) along with their cruising yachts whenever they went on trips. Our new mate Trev jumped to the rescue and went to get his incredibly bright 12v cable-powered spotlight and after a short tactical discussion about tides, currents and wind direction, Hugh was leading the charge off hunting for the dingy. We were anchored in an elaborate river system and were fortunate to have been at dinner the whole time the tide was rising, which meant that the dingy was hopefully inside the waterway and not taking a rough ride out in the ocean just beyond the heads. There were many little inlets along this so-called 'creek' (an 8nm long meandering waterway) so it could have been a long night of checking each one. While the moon was high, clouds shrouded the creek, which was at this point 2nm from one side to the other. While we could see the rock formations hemming in the waterway on the other side, their was not enough light to see a pale grey dingy floating off on a solo adventure. This was where the 12v ridiculously bright spotlight came in and lit up the rockwall like there was a diva about to come out for a performance.
And there she was, as luck would have it, 'The Krissy III' was floating off the nearest point, right where Hugh thought it would be given the way the elements would have affected it. A speedy rescue and Hugh was off hooning her around reminding her how much we loved her.
A new painter line attached, and we were not going to let her out of our sight again...between us we again made the pact that if we see something and think about doing it, we should just go right ahead and do it. In this case, do not wait for the line to chafe through before replacing it otherwise you could be left high and dry and stranded on your boat!
A new painter line attached, and we were not going to let her out of our sight again...between us we again made the pact that if we see something and think about doing it, we should just go right ahead and do it. In this case, do not wait for the line to chafe through before replacing it otherwise you could be left high and dry and stranded on your boat!
13/11/2014
0 comments:
Post a Comment