We'd always kept the dinghy (which was new when we bought the boat) underneath the porch at Oak Harbor. And this year, when I moved back from Washington, D.C., and we decided to look for it, it was missing.
Luckily, when Dad called Oak Harbor to find out What On Earth They'd Done With The Dinghy, they admitted they'd moved it into the shed. Without telling us.
Good thing we asked.
So on my day off, rather than sail, we went down to Pasadena and muscled the deflated dink into the car. And no. I don't have an explanation for the plastic bag hanging out of the back of my jeans.
For the whole year I've lived on the boat there's been a mysterious orange thing in a plastic bag. Apparently it's the dinghy pump. Good thing dad wouldn't let me take it off the boat, huh? I have a whole cabinet on the boat dedicated to Dad's bric-a-brac and crock-a-crap.
Putting the pump together was not too much of a mystery. I mean, I've got degrees. I can handle a pump.
Sadly, the pump came with six nozzles and a pressure gauge, which I never got to work. Maybe I should have stayed back in grad school for a dinghy 101 course.
I resorted to everyone's favorite method of trial and error for fitting the correct nozzle to the pump ports. Interestingly enough the nozzles lock onto the plastic ports. There's a spring-loaded thinger inside each one that needs to be depressed, we discovered, in order for the air to stay in when the nozzle is removed. This was discovered after much pumping.
Here I am pumping.
Dad took a turn. And pumped about 10 times before handing the reins back to me. I am daughter. Hear me roar!
I finished up the job more or less quickly.
And then took a nap on the dock while dad went to get the lock. Pumping is no easy job, OK?
After that, all I needed to do was tie her up and lock her down. Of course I locked her down. I mean, people have no problems stealing hoses and hoses have a lot in common with dinghies. Like... they're both made of rubber.
Now I just need to wash it. It's looking like it spend a couple years under a porch in Pasadena and we can't have that now, can we?
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ReplyDeleteSometimes I feel as though I'm writing a gloss in the margins of an ancient scroll. Today, an exegesis of a term you may not understand.
ReplyDeleteIn the House on the Hill, there are many Stowaways. Flip-top plastic hampers that are supposed to be for storage, but usually are the oubliettes in which we put stuff we can't use but don't want to throw out or give away. We have about fifty such hampers stacked downstairs. One contains such a useless collection of doolollies and gimcrack that it defied a label other than "BRIC-A-BRAC AND CROCK O' CRAP." And that's the origin of that term. Schnannawah!
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