The rise, fall, and resurrection of the inflatable sailing dinghy

We don't know much about the earlier days of our bright yellow sailing wonder. We suspect it was probably 10+ years old, and that it must have been a brilliant boat when it was new. Both color- and quality-wise. It had a rig to it, so it could actually be sailed. Brilliant if you should need to learn how to sail, for instance if you intend to sail home to the other side of the planet. Consider the «rise» covered now.

As mentioned in earlier blogposts we fought bravely to keep the dinghy alive, and for some time it actually looked like we might prevail. However someone borrowed it for some time and when we found it again only the memories remained of its once superb qualities. No more «Sailing 101; learn how to sail – in an inflatable dinghy that needs re-pumping every 5-15 minutes». Now consider the fall covered.

No, hang on a second! There's something more to the fall:
After some time we were able to secure ourselves a new inflatable from the brilliant NZ net-auction site TradeMe. For 100 $NZ we were the proud new owners of a grey, «new» Avon Redstart, the «Grey Ghost». Probably about the same age as the previous one, but in better condition. There was now absolutely no need to hold on to the sad, sad remains of the Yellow Wonder. We carefully dismantled whatever might be usable, or otherwise come in handy in the foreseeable and unforeseeable future.

All usable parts gently scavenged we could now say our last goodbyes to the yellow wonder in a respectful and honourable little seremony.

As we at this point were still anchored off Whangarei, New Zealand, a lot of things were happening around the boat. We were busy getting ready for the big journey. Despite this Egil found the time to try to somehow fit the sailing rig for the Yellow Wonder onto the new Grey Ghost. I strategically omitted to inform him of the absolute futility of the project due to the new Grey Ghost being half the size of the old Yellow Wonder, a completely different construction and not equipped with any of the gadgets necessary to mount the rig. After all the more hopeless the project, the longer it would keep him off my back and thus allow me time to undisturbed do all the important stuff I was doing at the time, such as... such as... Important Stuff!
However after less than a week (impressively short time considered the projects impossibility!): lo and behold: Egil had succeeded in ressurecting the inflatable sailing dinghy! Hats off!

We have now used the sail-rig for a couple of trips, one quite an extended one. It takes an hour to rig for unexperienced people, but we're aiming to reduce that to about 20 minutes with some more training.

The most amazing thing however is Egil's complete lack of «I told you so» - attitude. I'm not sure if he is aware he has comitted a miracle unsurpassed by anything the world has seen for a couple of thousand years.