Free at last, free at last!

(Every blog needs an injection of MKLj every now and then, right?)

We DO have a new-found freedom as of yesterday - we got the dinghy motor on the dinghy and to the boat and running!  We just both tooled around the marina a little.  It's a bit sketchy for me still - I was apparently keeping it at too low of an idle and it died once (as I was floating out to sea, alone.  Or maybe the tide was actually pushing me to the dock.  Depends on which one of us tells the story) and it kept trying to stall out.  I got the thing back to the dock and Mark hopped in with me.  If I'm going down (or over in this case) he's going with me.  We are a team.  That's what he signed up for.  (Maybe he should've read the fine print...)

The engine has tiller steering and it is kinda wacky to me.  I have to face the bow of the dinghy, put the tiller in my left hand and steer opposite of the way I want to go.  Not that complicated.  The gas is also in the handle and it seems backwards to me.  So along with moving the tiller to the right in order to go left, I have to twist the handle one way or the other to speed up and slow down.  And don't forget that I can't actually slow down too much or the engine dies...  It'll just take practice.  I need to keep going out until it becomes second nature.  Don't want to accidentally turn into an oncoming boat and speed up when I'm trying to slow down and turn away.

We also saw a dolphin or two when we were out.  I've been up close and personal with dolphins before, so I know how enormous they actually are - but you forget that when you're on a 40ft sail boat.  When one of the dolphins surfaced right behind the tiny dinghy it was a nice reminder of how gargantuan they really are.

Here's a little video proof that the dinghy is up and around.  We now have the freedom to get to land when we're anchored out!  Having to take the SUPs with us every time and paddle the dogs to distant shores for a pee break is over.  Now we just have to figure out which davit system we're going with and get that sucker strapped to the back of LunaSea.  Only about 6 weeks before we set sail for 3 weeks!