Pimp My Dinghy and Driving Miss Daisies

Jul 19 - 24, 2007

Thursday, July 19, 2007 - Volley Ball Beach, George Town, Exumas
By Tom

We woke up early and had breakfast and then headed in to town to pick up our rental car. Speedo Ed, Kenny and Linda met us on the dinghy dock and after twenty minutes of filling out forms I got the keys to a late model Honda CRV (some kind of mini SUV) which was in nice condition.

I haven't driven a car in sometime and everyone in our Honda was a little nervous, including me. Not only do the Bahamians drive on the wrong side of the road, but the car they gave us had the steering wheel on the wrong side! Of course, this also means that the gear shifter and the switches, blinkers, radios, etc. were in the wrong place as well. Uh oh.

We managed to do ok with the driving, but Speedo Ed had to remind me a few times to get on the wrong (or the right) side of the road. In one narrow incident, I had to dive the car off the roadway and into the weeds to avoid a car that was coming head on at us. Of course, me being on the wrong side of the road probably makes it my fault, but at least I avoided the oncoming car.

Everyone got real quite after the near miss, so I made a command decision and stopped for lunch. After some food and a few drinks, the team was much less critical of my driving endeavors.

Post lunch, we continued south down the Queen's Highway and crossed over to Little Exuma where we stopped at Santanna's Ocean Front Bar, which was mega cool. Amy took several pictures which are shown side right.

I plied the team with several more rum drinks, but even with a few more in them, they continued all of the back seat driving, albiet at a much more mellow level. I had so much driving help, I kind of felt like I was driving four Miss Daisy's.

Anyhow, before the rest of my shopping brigade got too wasted, I loaded them back in our Honda and we returned to Georgetown proper. We stopped at our last store (Top to Bottom) and on our way in the door, we were accosted by this film producer lady who is heading up a crew that is making a movie called A Bahamian Wedding filmed here on Great Exuma.

In her words, she was "looking for some crazy white people" to stand in as extras in her movie over the next couple of weeks. I declined to fill out the information card and stand in line for accompanying pictures, but the rest of my crew did. I think it was the rum punches talking and I suspect after a good nights rest, they may re-evaluate their desire to be in the movie.

After Top to Bottom, I dropped everyone off at the dinghy dock and took my car back to the rental place. Ed gave Amy a ride back to our boat in his much larger dinghy along with all of our purchases and I joined her there after collecting our now refilled propane tank.

Amy took a late afternoon nap with Milo and when I tried to wake her up for Thursday night poker, she told me in no uncertain terms that she would not be participating this evening. I went up by myself and we ended up having eleven players show.

Eleven is a bad number to have, because it isn't really enough for two tables and it's too many for one. We opted for one table with everyone crammed around and it sucked pretty bad. I was out after the first 90 minutes, but not before Amy paddled herself into watch us play.

She and I had a beer or two at the bar and returned home after saying goodbye to our Army friends. They are heading back to the states tomorrow and a new unit is coming in to take their place.

Tomorrow we get back to the job list and I am hopeful that we can reach the half way point and get closer to being ready to sail again as lobster season is now only ten days away! Stay tuned, more to follow.

Meanwhile, back at the Hall of Justice......(or a couple of days later)

Tuesday, July 24, 2007 - Volley Ball Beach, George Town, Exumas
By Tom

The last several days have passed in a blur of furious boat work. Let me catch you up to speed.

When we last left you, we had just returned from our big day with the rental car. After traipsing all across the island in both directions twice, we managed to get most of the pieces and parts we needed for all of our boat projects.

The projects ranged in size from simple thirty minute fixes like making new bungy cords (our died after 4 years of exposure), to the full three day fiberglass layup of our dinghy sponsons (tube extenders). So far I'm about 90 percent of the way done my list and it looks like I'll be finished soon.

I just got the dinghy back in the water this morning and I was able to test out our hull modifications, shown side right. So far I am mega-impressed with the way this worked. The dinghy sets a full four inches higher up out of the water in the stern and the center of buoyancy has moved forward a good 8 inches. The result is a much more stable, drier, easy to plane dinghy.

I am kind of surprised that the company(Livingston) doesn't incorporate this idea into their build as almost everyone I've met that has a dinghy like ours has commented on the lack of buoyancy in the back half of the boat.

The only down side I've seen so far is that with the reduced drag, the dinghy is now so fast at anything over half throttle that it scares the hell out of me. I suspect if we had our 8 hp Honda here instead of in North Carolina, we could use it instead of our 15 hp Mercury to plane us and our dive gear without any problems. Oh well, we'll just try and limit ourselves to half throttle or less.

Special thanks to Kenny on Lattittude for helping me get through this project as his technical advise was invaluable. Of course, having said that, if the new fiberglass pieces fail at some time in the future, he'll also provide a good scape goat.

I wonder if we can get some film of the whole process and make another one of those shows on cable tv where they fix up people's cars and stuff with gold rims and tinted windows. We'll do it with dinghies instead of cars and we can call it "Pimp my Dinghy".

The only real outstanding jobs remaining to be completed are all sewing related. I hope to get the machine out tomorrow if the weather cooperates and get those projects taken care of as well.

In other news, things are pretty quiet here in Georgetown. We've been playing a lot of cards at St. Francis in the evenings and in the four games so far this week, Amy impressed everyone by winning twice, while Speedo Ed and I took each took home one victory a piece.

The wind is forecast to stay up around 20 knots or so for the next several days and then it looks like we have a window opening to head out. Of course given how well the weather dude has been doing lately, I guess we'll have to wait and see.

Stay tuned, more to follow