Rescued by Airborne

Not us, the dinghy!  During the past several days we've had several successful landings and launchings of the dinghy at a place on the beach pointed out to us by Kathy and Hal on svAirborne.  Saturday we went into town and returned to our parking place on the beach with several bags of groceries.  Our friend Kathy noticed that one of our dinghy wheels was quite flat.  We were really bummed out.  Not only are our wheels too small and we knew we had to replace them with larger ones (being held for us in LaPaz), but now our dinghy was useless!

Well, yesterday we dinghied over to their boat to look at a wheel which they had purchased here in Manzanillo to see if their wheel could fit our dinghy.  After several measurements and lots of conversation we all agreed that we should give it a try.  Hal and Kathy offered to pick us up at 9 a.m. this morning, and that all of us would walk up to the bus, go to the wheel store and buy two wheels, then go the machinist shop where they had their axle made and arrange for axles to be made for us.  And that is what we did.  We never would have found these resources on our own -- we are so grateful to them for spending all day with us, running around town to rescue our dinghy.  Not only today, but we'll repeat our steps tomorrow afternoon to pick up the axles along with the wheels which we left for the machinist to ensure correct measurement.

~~~ Marlene and Roy ~~_/) ~~