Dinghy Repair

The way our life works now is that Tahina – our sailing catamaran – serves as our home. If our sailboat is our home, then our dinghy is our car. It has it’s own little carport on the back of our boat. In a way, our dinghy is more like an SUV compared to the average dinghy used by many cruisers. Most dinghies are about 8 feet, most mono-hulls’ dinghies are that or smaller. Ours is 12 feet in length. We have a more powerful (25hp) engine than average (10-15hp) as well. Since we have a large space on the back of our catamaran, it’s feasible for us to carry a larger dinghy.

Our dinghy’s size gives us the ability to handle slightly rougher seas without getting wet, and enables us to carry heavier loads (more provisions, more people, and/or more scuba gear). So, it really is more like an SUV than a car in the cruiser sense.

Unfortunately, back when we were traveling the east coast of the Malaysia peninsula, we developed a slow leak. It’s been forcing me to pump air into the dinghy these past few months. We attempted to find the leak, but had no luck. Finally, I heard of a good repair facility here in Phuket, Thailand. Yesterday, with the help of Michael on s/v Callisto, we dropped off the dinghy at a boat ramp where the repair outfit picked it up on a trailer and hauled it off. We are not only getting the leaks (it turned out there were 3) fixed, but are also buying a custom cover for the tube tops to protect them from further sun wear and tear in what we hope will be another couple of years of life.

If all goes well, we’ll have the boat back in 2 days from now. We’ll be “trapped” on Tahina at anchor until its ready. Although, we do have a two-person kayak so we can row our way to the nearby beach restaurants, and even catch a ride to town if needed.

Otherwise today was a mundane day of chores. We ran the generator to charge the battery bank, ran our watermaker, and ran a load of laundry and hung it up to dry. We also moved the boat a bit closer to shore to make our kayak rides shorter.