3 Hour Tour

This actually happened the morning my mom left (Feb. 10th). We took video of what happened and have been trying to upload it ever since. It still hasn't worked so thats why this post is so late. Sorry for the delay!

Casey here- The last time I did a post was January, 1st so my dad forced me to do one today. Lucky for me some interesting things happened today. This morning my mom took off for Albany at 6:00 in the morning and we all woke up to dinghy her in. As she left we all tried different methods to get into the car to go with her. We tried everything from jumping into the open window to climbing onto the roof! Since it was still only 6:15 in the morning, my dad went back to sleep and Kaitlin and I watched “Meet the Robinsons” on the computer. We brought all of our old movies (approx. 70) from home so we decided to watch it.

Towards the end of the movie my dad woke up and did hid morning “dock walk” or as Kaitlin mom and I like to call it his “talk walk”. When he got back he did a blog entry (see below entry) and Kaitlin and I watched Nims island. Apparently the blog entry took 110 minutes to write since the movie finished just as he was done. Then the adventure started.

We decided to go to this ocean science museum of science in the ocean museum of science (at least that’s what we called it) for school today. Mom had the rental car so our choices were either walk or dinghy. Since it was 8-9 miles we went for the latter choice. 15 knot winds had been predicted for Vero Beach so we knew we were in for a bumpy ride. On goes the dinghy engine and out we go. On the engine there is a little red light that shoes if there is a problem. Usually when you turn the engine on that light turns on and then off after a few seconds. This time it stayed on. We tried revving the engine and it did NOT sound right at all. Back to the boat and off goes the engine. The most common problem is low oil. Since we hadn’t filled the oil since we got the engine we figured it was that. Dad almost got off the dinghy to tear apart the boat to find oil when I vented he gas tank and heard “sssssssssssssssssssss.” “Good call bud!” “Thanks dad.” On went the engine one more time and no more weird sputtering noises were heard.

We went into the dinghy dock where we went to the bathroom and dropped off garbage. While they were doing that I pumped up the dinghy pontoons because they were getting a bit deflated. Boy do I regret doing that. Dad got back when I was done and we went out on the marina and into the ICW channel. There you can plane so we did. There were 3 foot waves out there which are like nothing on Pelican but on the 10 foot inflatable, it did not make for a soothing ride. Did I mention the rock hard pontoons we were sitting on? It went on like that for a half hour until we finally got there.

At the beginning of the channel in there was a big sign that read “restricted area do not enter” We decided to ignore it and continue on our way. When we got halfway in we decided to call them, just in case. We called them and they said: Sorry, you can only reach us by land. WHAT!?!?!?!? Dads words were”oh. Well, my kids’ and I just dinghied 9 miles to get here and I was really hoping to be able to show them the museum.” “Sorry sir but you can only access us by land.””Oh. Ok. Thank you. Bye.” I turned around the dinghy and slowly motored out. Dad got out the handheld GPS and tried to find a place where we could get to land. Everything was completely marshy except for a tiny channel consisting of one to two foot depths. The dinghy only draws around 8 inches so we could do it! We went back to the ICW channel where the waves were a good 3-4 feet now and we were going with them so we were jumping them. We decided this wasn’t worth it so we headed back another half hour of jumping waves and we were back at the boat. Now we are all safely back here and I am writing this blog entry.