We have been in Provincetown for over a month, and before that we hadn’t done the best job of keeping the dinghy’s bottom clean. It’s easy to forget that the dinghy needs its bottom cleaned as well.

The easiest way to keep the dinghy’s bottom clean is to simply lift it out of the water and many folks do this. Our dinghy though is hard heavy and swings and bangs if not strapped down tight, even at anchor. So we leave our dinghy in the water for long periods of time, think months and months. With only occasional lifting when we are moving the big boat.

This past month we’ve had an amazing amount of growth and we’ve noticed a significant slow down. This isn’t usually a big deal since we are never in a rush. But This summer we’re on a mooring and Ryan is working on shore which means he needs to go to shore with the wind has picked up past what we would usually do. Having growth on the motor and on the bottom and the drag that causes can be a safety issue when the wind is blowing 30 knots and your motor isn’t strong enough to push you forward.

So today we dropped Ryan off at Capt. Jack’s Wharf and then immediately beached the dinghy and used a paint scraper to scrape all the growth off the bottom of the dinghy. The whole process only took about half and hour and the result we moved from going 1.5 knots to 2.3 knots. Now we’re a little better prepared for windy days.