…and, err, well, Mary Ellen and I were sitting around thinking about buying a dinghy for the Shenandoah. I mean, we have a 6-man inflatable raft that lives in a plastic box behind the sofa, uninflated, until someone throws it overboard.
But, we were thinking of something a little sportier, something we could jump in for a quick spin to the 7-11 for a bottle of wine. Then we remembered there are no 7-11’s in France, but there are McDonalds! The trouble is they are only in major population centers and sometimes it is miles to get to one. So speed would be an issue.
Sooooo, I did a little research on the net and I think I have found something that might work. There are a couple of hurdles, however, such as the width of the proposed dinghy. The canals are wide enough, but the locks are only 5.10 meters in width. I figure that if we could get this thing going fast enough when we hit the entrance to a lock the sides would bend up and we would slip right in. Then, when we wanted to get out of the lock, just push up the throttles – all eight of them – voila! Power is everything!
There might be a couple of other things that would have to be worked out, such as the European price of a liter of gas, or the noise, or…
We will let you know how we do!
