saturday boat ride we went up to patty's house on saturday to take the little whaler out for a boat ride. chris gave it to her for christmas last year (yes, he's a nice brother) and, now that she has a house with a dock, it's taken up residence at her place. chris took it out there a couple of weeks ago and told me, omg, stace, you would love it there - it's not, like, intracoastal, like where we live. instead, it's quiet, quiet, quiet, peaceful canal. lots of birds. mallards, ibises...

unfortunately, we got going too late as we didn't decide on this boat ride until, like, 4 p.m. when there we had a church-or-boat-ride discussion. and then we went to costco first. so it was basically dark by the time we got out on the water. we saw a lot of pretty birds... even a whole little bunch of baby ducks with their mama! but it was too dark to really bother with pictures.


here's the boat at its new dock...


during the ride, we had a bit of an altercation with some bushes... there's this area of the canal with a strong current that just wiped us over into the bank. we pushed ourselves out, and then afterwards had to laugh at the sticks and stuff stuck to the boat. poor dirty b.



here's the dirty b's engine. the reason i took this picture is to show the cute new baby engine chris bought. it's really for his dinghy...

the dinghy is actually pretty fun. you know, a little inflatable boat. we took it around the canals in our neighborhood one day... you can take it in the intracoastal, but you'll get wet. i was thinking that when mandy visits this summer, we can take that around. we could also take it diving, if we wanted... take it over to the ocean, drop it in, motor out to one of the reefs... after i went out on the dinghy that day, i was like, "MAN, when kyle is about 10, he's going to BEG to come visit us."

but anyway, it also will propel the little boat, too. amusing, considering it only has FOUR horsepower. (for you non boaters, to give you an idea, chris's big boat has 2 150-hp engines... 300 horsepower total. and i think the other engine in the pic is 150 hp, too.) we used it almost the whole time... it's clean-running and fuel-efficient, like chris's big boat engines... no stinky smell or oil left behind in the water. plus, look at it - it's adorable! i tease chris a lot for all his toys, but i gotta admit that i like 'em too.

anyway, then the sun went down and we went back in. gotta try this boat ride again, only with light this time!

  ¶ 9:36 AM