I recently made the mistake of leaving Alana's dingy in the water for about two weeks as I traveled around a bit. It had been fine in the water down in Pensacola all winter, so I assumed that a couple weeks in the warm waters of Georgia's Skidaway River couldn't hurt too much. Boy, was I wrong! I returned to find about 2inches worth of various plants and critters covering the bottom of the boat (click on the pictures for maximum revulsion). They were so heavy that I could barley lift the dingy out of the water up onto the pier to clean the gunk off. Most of the growth consisted of what I later found out are called "sea grapes" by the locals, littler round, muddy looking spheres. I at first took these to be some sort of marine plant life and didn't stress a whole lot when they would pop and spray me in the face with salty liquid as I scraped away. Closer examination however, revealed that they were actually fish eggs and that I was showering myself with fish egg whites. Mmmmmmmmmm, fish egg whites! I manged to scrape away all the eggs and other soft growth, but have so far had no luck with the round, calcified footprints left by each of the several thousand crustaceans I scraped away. Alana's bottom paint seems to be doing its job, so I'm not too worried about her, but it is clear that my dingy needs to reside above water some place.
