Dinghy Dependence

Elvis

                    The beach at Punta de Mita

When people reminisce about their cruising years, they talk of the lovely towns they visited, wonderful people they met, spectacular coves where they snorkeled, and the glittering beaches which were overflowing with shells. What they don't mention so often is the dinghy, and its importance to the success of their travels. While anchored in one of those lovely spots, the dinghy is a cruiser's... shall we say, Honda Accord. You all know approximately how long it takes to head for the garage, get into your Honda, start it up, and take off. Rough estimate: 5 minutes?

That's not how it works with a dinghy. Sandy named our inflatable dinghy Elvis. But right now it looks like his name is E S, because most of the letters have fallen off. Elvis is carried on the stern of the boat, swinging from dinghy davits. Before we do anything we make sure the dinghy is secured to a cleat, so that Elvis doesn't leave the building without us! The dinghy davits have little pulleys on them so we can easily lower him into the water. That's the easy part. Elvis has oars, mostly for emergencies, but he has a hulking old 7.5 HP Honda motor, which weighs a ton. So once Elvis is in the water, the next trick is to get the motor attached to his stern. That motor is one heavy piece of work, and for now, we are using a dingy davit to lower it down. Chris lifts it off the rail, I hold the pulley line and lower it down to Sandy, who positions it and clamps it onto Elvis.

Next we have to load the dinghy with the essentials: oars, gas can, flotation devices, dry bags containing anything we don't want to get wet, and finally, the hand-held radio, just in case. Once Elvis is loaded, we cheerfully load ourselves, (one at a time please, and step in the middle of the boat) in, and off we go. Now call me crazy, but I'm thinking that this took longer than 5 minutes. But, hey. What else have we got to do? :)

While recently anchored at the nearby town of Punta de Mita, we decided to go ashore and explore the beach. We were getting ready to go, when we noticed a brown booby (big sea bird) perched on the bow of Faith. We laughed and called him our guard booby. Sandy named him Bobby. Weren't we lucky to have our very own booby aboard? And off we went.

But back to our dinghy story. All dinghy riders know (and if they don't know, they learn very quickly) that once in sight of the beach, timing is everything in order to execute a successful landing. You never want to try to beat a wave to the shore. Always be nice, and let the wave go first. If you time it right, your dinghy will scrape bottom at the opportune moment for the crew to jump out "commando style" and drag the dinghy clear of the water. Oh yes. I forgot to mention that in that nanosecond before the crew jumps into the water, they need to do a quick perusal to make sure there are no rays or skates that might be waiting to sting them.

Okay. Pretend that we've been on the beach, had lunch, found a shell, and are ready to go back to the boat. At Punta de Mita, returning to Elvis, we noticed that the tide had receded significantly, which meant we had quite a ways to drag him. Once in the water, Chris got in first because he was driving. But "the crew" couldn't get in yet, because we didn't want the motor to drag on the bottom. We needed to be in deeper water. So we pushed out a bit farther, until Sandy and I were over our waists in water. Chris started the motor and announced, "Okay, get in." Sandy and I, who are on opposite sides of the raft, looked at each other and burst out laughing. Of course, now the waves are changing, and we're even deeper, so Chris' voice gets a little louder, "Come on!" So Sandy and I jump up and dive head first (can you say face plant?) into the boat like a couple of big sacks of flour! Wasn't pretty; and I've got the bruise to prove it, but we made it. And lets face it. The people on the beach who were watching all of our shenanigans... what did they think? Who cares. We'll never see them again! Once we were in the dinghy, we never looked back.

When we got back to Faith, our little dinghy foray was the least of our problems. In our absence, the boat had been white washed (and I'm not exaggerating here) with bird poop from our friendly brown booby, Bobby, but who we now fondly refer to as Butthead.