Well, here we are again, back on the topic of the goddamned dinghy, a full 18 months after it had begun.

Let me give you a summary. I bought a used dinghy. it sucked. I bought a new one. it eventually began to suck and now, yes, it sucks.

So, as time and entropy march on like so much water through the Matanzas River, I find once again that the primary means of transporation between the shore and my Hole in the Water, is in constant and perpetual danger of becoming a land vehincle on the ocean floor, rather than a water craft.

Let me give you a summary of how I got to the point of calling the manufacturer and requesting a new one, out of the box:

• The oarlock broke the very first time I used it.
• The protruding valves constantly get caught on lines, bags, feet and girlfriends, often times resulting in them being ripped out and shot overboard, while the precious air leaks rapidly out
• The bench seat brackets have cracked, which is fine, since the straps on the dinghy itself are both hanging on by a thread
• The transom is coming unglued. It’s dangerously close to slipping out one day.
• It once sank.
• All four valves leak air at an alarming rate. Through the weeks, as I identify the worst offenders, I move them to the keep or bow, so that my left and right tubes remain infated
• The divider between the three tubes has deteriorated, and now inflating one tube infllates them all, whcih seems convenient until you relaize that they also deflate at the same time.

I came home from Chicago the other night and couldn’t even see the outboard above the floating dock. I had just replaced my bilge pump battery, and had I not done that, it would have certainly sunk to my great embarassment.

So, the dude at Silver Marine has happily asked me to send in some photos of the various damaged areas, so hopefully that’ll result in an all-new dinghy being delivered to me.

Hello everybody!

And, by everybody, I realize it may only be me, but I'm such a genius that I know that someday some major publication will pick up my brilliant work, and decide that I'm more than good enough to exist in print, and take me out of my minor spot in the blogosphere here.

So, let's recap, shall we?

- The dinghy is in great shape! No holes. Motor works great. One of the bungs has a broken checkvalve but that's only an issue when re-inflating, which I rarely do.
- I still work at my family business.
- I bought a new truck finally. A Toyota Tacoma. 4-door. TRD.
- The sailboat still doesn't run. Down to replacing throttle cables and the oil cooler. I'm frustrated with it.
- I relaunched my website - iTunesRegistry.com. All new code. All new issues.
- I'm an iPhone user. Stick it, Sprint.

The new outboard motor performs admirably! The last few weekends, I've taken the dinghy out to a little beach on the east side of salt run, and last weekend, as I sat there and the tide ran out, I noticed the bottom of the dinghy had a coral reef growing on it.

So, this weekend, I scraped all that crap off, and sat there leaning against it, while I read a book in the surf. Eventually, the tide came back in, and I was able to motor on home, and lordy is it ever quick.

Welcome back to my continuing series "Dinghy Woes". Today's new series isn't so much about the inflatable as the last series focused on, but rather with the little 4 HP engine-that-nearly-could outboard. Hopefully this will be a short series.

So, here's the background. Over the last week or so I felt i was going slower and slower. The poor little engine just won't rev up as high as it used to, and even though I have it throttled out, it just appears to be working too hard. Now, I confess that I do not know the condition of the underside of the dinghy - it could be full of barnacles and crabtraps, but I would expect at least the thing being able to push it along faster than it was. Additionally, I'm farther away from the dock than I had been before.

Yesterday was the worst yet. I was going against the tide, and even though that's never been a noticeable problem before, today, it took me about a minute to get past the Schooner Freedom. I was moving literally as fast as, perhaps, a cat would walk. Ridiculously slow.

Once I got out and away from the marina, it seemed i wasn't moving at all. I even pointed the motor straight ahead and manned the oars just to make any progress at all! The trip from the end of the dock to the Sovereign, including rowing, took 12 minutes. Twelve Minutes!

Once aboard, I took the little guy out of gear (after I got him started back up because he stalled in exhaustion), he could throttle all the way up and down with no problem, but still didn't want anything to do with idling. I'm sure it's time for a $10 carb rebuild kit, but what the hell. Maybe I'll get this instead:



Nothing says lovin' like 2.5 times the horsepower! This'll take the dinghy up to it's max rated horsepower, so now i might be able to do my crazy idea of motor out to the inlet for some bodyboarding before the summer comes and goes.

Well, after years of venturing out on my own, including stints doing prototype jet fighter maintenance software, my own hosting company, a nightmarish project for a large warehouse club, a failed experience at another hosting company, I land a swanky job at my father's company, seemingly fulfilling a prophecy which had been put into motion since the day he sent me off to be an Electrical Engineer.



I've got quite a bit of work to do to get up to speed in this entirely new industry. No actual programming yet (in the traditional sense). It's going to be all Programmable Logic Controllers for a while. We'll see how it all goes....