After having worked Saturday and all Sunday on the repair of the dinghy, I went to bed hoping that now all is tight and I can use the dinghy until my new one arrives.

Early yesterday morning I got up, in very good mood. I inflated the dinghy, then took the soap water spray bottle and sprayed on the edges of the patches.

What follows can be described as a flow of repeating a 4-letter-word.

Frustration to the power of 10 x 10!

I wanted to go on land to ask the Marine Service guy if he knows where I can get the dinghy repaired.

But for doing this, I need someone who brings me at land by his dinghy.

First I called Ralf of SV Katinka. He did not answer. (Later it turned out he was under water cleaning Katinka’s hulls.)

Then I thought I’ll call the skipper of SY Pelagic Life. A few days ago I received a mail from a sailor who is currently in the Rairoa atoll, Tuamotus, saying the skipper of SV Pelagic Life, is Canadian and a nice guy. He saw my position on the PredictWind tracking site, being just beside SV Pelagic Life.

As I saw SV Pelagic Life on my AIS screen, I got her MMSI number. With this, a placed a DSC call on CH 72 and 16. No acknowledgement. Nobody on board.

On the other side of MaRe I saw a skipper just taking a shower. Once he finished, I just whistled him. I understood that I need help and don’t have dinghy. He wanted to come over.

Going back from the bow into the cockpit, a dinghy came straight to MaRe. It turned out it’s the skipper of SV Pelagic Life. He returned to his boat and saw my DSC call and came straight away over to us.

I just asked him to come on board when the skipper of the other boat arrived as well. I thanked him for coming over but it happened that I got a minute ago already help.

Dave, the skipper of Pelagic Life, is indeed a very nice and helping sailor. He is already well integrated in the sailor network here.

He knew already Kevin, the guy from Marine Service and messaged him if he knows someone who can fix a dinghy.
The answer came straight away: Gael the skipper of SV Mister Fizz, known as fixing all kind of boat problems. Dave contacted him as well and a while later he came and we looked at the dinghy. The main problem was that I don’t have the right bond. Gael has. We agreed that he comes back by 1600 and fixes the dinghy.

I removed in the meantime my patches and the remains of the bond I used.

At 1700 Gael came and 40 min later the work was done. Gael has a very special 2 component glue for dinghy repair. He used syringes to measure the right amount of each component.

After the dinghy was partially inflated, he pressed the layers together. Job done! I paid him

Now a time, nagging a bit on my nerves, started. Only in the morning I could inflate it normally.

During the night, through my bedroom hatch, I touched the dinghy and I got the impression that it is as inflated as we did it yesterday.

Hope grew!