It's cold, and I don't feel like spending any more time than necessary outside. In the meantime, it has been raining, sleeting, and snowing for the past few days and Tooth has slowly been filling up with water.
As Tooth fills, he sinks into the water and has less freeboard keeping him afloat. The problem with decreased freeboard is if a winter storm strikes and kicks up some waves in the marina, Tooth could easily be swamped and sink.
As mentioned, I do not want to spend any extra time outside in the freezing wet world that exists outside of the cabin, so the thought of trying to float our sunken dinghy would be less than pleasant.
A front was rolling in and we were expecting a lot of rain, possibly enough to sink Tooth. This served as enough motivation to get outside and pump the water out of Tooth!
While I did have to go outside to setup the pump, I didn't have to stay out there for very long. I hooked the pump over the sheer and pinched the pump under a block of ice that was floating around inside the hull. The pump runs on three D batteries, avoiding any manual labor on my behalf to remove the water.
Setting up the pump was not much work, after which my presence was not necessary. I was able to return to the warmth of the cabin while I awaited the water removal to be completed. After 20 minutes, the dinghy was almost completely dry!
With Tooth emptied out, he would be ready to receive the coming rain, ready to be filled up again by the next heavy rainstorm.
