Audrey and I had a really nice daddy daughter dinghy date yesterday.

April and I got this idea from a cruising and homeschooling family we met when we had only been living aboard for 2 weeks and who we’ve looked up to ever since (Jay, Tanya, and their 5 kids aboard Take Two): Our girls each has a sheet of stars we’ve awarded them for behaving well or doing something great. Whenever they get 30 stars they get to plan a one-on-one dates with me or April.

Audrey has been dying to go on a dinghy ride somewhere and have a picnic lunch and that was what we did for this date.

We hopped in the dink in Melbourne Harbor and headed over the Melbourne Beach fishing pier. It was a long bouncy ride over with a good chop on the Indian River, with the breeze against us and not knowing exactly where we were going. By the time we got there we’d been dinghying for most of an hour. We tied up, threw our picnic up onto the pier and sat right down to it. After lunch we strolled over to the park there and horsed around for awhile on the play equipment. When we got back into the dink and headed back the the chop had settled and the wind was with us. We got her up on a plane and flew across in all of 10 minutes. It was a really nice time.

Audrey steered about half of the time and I took the opportunity to teach a number of points on safety and operation of the dinghy and engine.

Audrey is an awesome kid and I’m so proud to be her dad.