FAREWELL TO OUR 'BEEMER' ............................

No-one should get emotionally attached to an inflatable dinghy without becoming 'certifiable' ........... Although any sailor will tell you that an inflatable dinghy is the 'next-best-thing' to a life-jacket when treading water becomes inevitable ........... Today we let go of our 'BEEMER' which has taken us to so many beautiful shores, to so many estuaries and gunk-holes, and to so many other wonderful places over the years, in safety and security (It never bounced us out once)................ You only need to look back to our previous postings to know that none of those would have been possible without the inflatable ............ It has been a wonderful work horse, that gave us not a single problem, not even a single leak ...................... ADIOS, ADIOS INFLATABLE DINGHY



Now here's a radically new idea, for all you 'cruiser' types ................. Food and fishing becomes a passion when you're a sailor ............. It's the salt air that makes food taste so much better and creates that 'appetite' or maybe it's just the delicious way in which Laurie cooks.............. Whatever the reason, catching fish is an art-form .....................And while we have a good assortment of rods in the rack, and places to mount them in the rod-holders on the rail, you still need both hands to reel in the line, and on a heaving-moving-bouncing deck doing 7 to 8 knots, it's not always a 'doable' thing with a fighting, razor-edged-I-want-to-kill-you-too-type 25-30 lb fish ........... And so you revert to trolling 150-200 foot hand-lines ..................... The down-side of this operation is the need for one person with HD gloves on to bring in the line, while the other person winds it back onto the reel or face a huge tangle .................So, while staring at the deck-mounted winches, the brain was placed into forward motion, ................. The knife, the rubber and the glue came out, and you can see the outcome for yourself ...................A brand new 'two-speed self-gripping reel winder' ......................



And on the weekend when SALINAS comes out to play they all congregate at the little barrier islands where there is blue water away from the mangroves ....................



And now we can show you the magic of stowing the new dinghy motor on deck, in front of the mast when we set sail, instead of down below in the lazarette (the after hatch) using the HOUDINI method ............... And then there's our wonderful friend "SEBASTIAN BONNIN", who in his 19ft open sailing dinghy, sails the bay at all hours and at every opportunity for the SHEER LOVE OF SAILING .................



ADIOS, ADIOS, BUENO SUERTA LITTLE BEEMER

The dinghy left doing 70 mph, which is much faster than we ever did, but then again the new owners are so much younger than us................