Again

You might remember that nearly two years ago our family fun boat, the Little Dipper, was stolen from us at Chiloé Island, in Chile.

The Little Dipper was an 8' Walker Bay sailing dinghy. And ever since she was whisked away in the dark of the night, Alisa has been set on finding us a replacement.

Well, you can see where this is going. Someone told Alisa about a Walker Bay for sale here in Bonaire...she tracked down the seller...and a day later we had a replacement Walker Bay.

And, even better, the seller took Fernando from us, the wonderful gift of a hard dinghy that replaced the Little Dipper and saw us all through the canales of Patagonia, securing the safety of the mothership with many a line ferried ashore to a stout tree. The seller (a lovely guy, Alisa reports) took Fernando away in his pickup, and came back the next day with the $200 USD he'd sold her for...which went a ways towards defraying the purchase price of the Walker Bay.

It was all still a bit on the expensive side to get this replacement boat when we had a perfectly good hard dinghy. But the boys are over the moon. And it was a joy for me to watch Elias immediately jump into the boat to sail around the anchorage for an hour or two.

I really didn't know he could sail that well!