Saturday, April 27, 2013

I might be winning the dinghy war!

For more than a year, I've been fighting this pesky little air leak in the starboard tube of my inflatable. The leak is on a seam and at the after end of the tube, where the rubber bumper is, all of this making getting a good seal with a patch rather difficult.

I pretty much used up the circles that came with the patch kit, building up the area around the seam and the bumper in an effort to get a better seal. What I needed was a larger patch.

Wandering the yard, I came across what looked like an abandoned dinghy. I'll emphasize "looked like," as pretty much any dinghy left deflated on the ground through the winter would look the same. Still, it was worth investigating.

What I discovered was that some other scavenger had already removed about a square foot of dinghy. This one was indeed dead! So I sliced a square foot or so for myself, without question or ethical quandry.

So far, so good... patch in place, dinghy inflated to full pressure... 24 hours later, still fully inflated and no sign of any leak around the patch. But I'll be heading back to the yard to salvage a bit more material, just in case.

Stay tuned.

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