Dumbledore Reawakend

We're doing it again!

Okay, no, we're not taking a boat for six months to Florida. This year's adventure is going to be a little shorter and a bit closer to home. Having jobs and living at the tail end of a pandemic slightly limits our capacity for adventure. However, this summer we're still going to manage to spend most of our time taking the boat to new, exciting places, and, most importantly, deliver crazy, goofy stories to you along the way!

But the best part of our trip will be the addition of two full-time crew members: twelve-year-old Shianne and ten-year-old Makenna. You might remember these two from our trip to Texas. After proving themselves more than capable on a land-bound vessel, we decided to invite them aboard Dumbledore for a summer of lakes, canals, rivers, and maybe even an ocean.

Last year, we traded our sailboat, Mischief Managed, for the diesel-powered trawler, Dumbledore. Dumbledore offered several amenities the sailboat did not, including a second head and cabin, an indoor steering wheel, and considerably fewer tall, pointy metal sticks. When we purchased Dumbledore, I was thrilled to get a boat that was already seaworthy, with everything ready to go from thrusters at the bow to dinghy davits at the stern. I was sure that this time we would be able to pull our boat out of storage, dump it in the water, and immediately be underway.

Boy was I wrong.

While I spent the winter at my day job, Justin was hard at work getting Dumbledore from a giant hunk of teak and fiberglass to something that would both house us comfortably and float. Here are the highlights of his to-do list:

• Soundproof the engine room
• Replace engine mounts
• Install water maker
• Add 19 batteries (and make Casey get a workout carrying them onboard...)
• Install inverter
• Build two control panels and install instruments
• Add air conditioning and heat (YAY!)
• Re-wire the boat in a way that makes sense in English and not just French (Dumbledore is native to Quebec)
• Fix leaky water tank
• Re-do plumbing system so the boat doesn't smell like poop
• Install lights
• Add freezer
• And a partridge in a pear tree  

Naturally, this created an enormous mess.

I thought boats were not supposed to have this many holes...

Justin needed a nap and there were too many tools on the bed. 

The floor wound up on the couch so Justin could work in the engine room. (Yes, this boat has an entire room for the engine instead of a tiny cabinet! So there's lots of space for the cats to get lost in!)  The bunks and counters were buried under mountains of parts and equipment. And everything was covered in a thick layer of sawdust and grime. I had a very difficult time imagining spending more than five minutes in this giant workshed of a boat, much less living there all summer.

And of course, Justin eventually roped me into helping out.

I was persuaded to wax the outside of the boat.

"Get a bigger boat," they said. "It'll be great, they said."

Does this make me a karate master now?

We even enlisted our younger crewmates to help with the work. (To varying degrees of success.)

Shianne vs. the wrench. Who will win?

That tablet may be glued to her hand.

This year we're using a larger dinghy to accommodate our extra crew members.

We had to take it out for a test run to make sure it was still functional, so we enjoyed a nice trip up the Buffalo River checking out creepy old factories and grain elevators.

A little way up the river we stumbled upon an old tour boat, made even spookier by the twinkling lights inside and boarded up windows. I have no idea why this boat was there or who owned it, but I am completely convinced that it's haunted.

Is that a ghost lurking on the first deck?

The dinghy was certainly functional, but Justin decided he didn't have enough projects to work on and needed to make the dinghy faster. He put a plywood board in the bottom so it could skip across the water instead of pushing through it like our trawler. Shianne and Makenna were very excited by the extra burst of speed, and I agreed to go with them for a final test while Justin worked on some other repairs. Shianne took the helm and we sped away, bouncing along the water. Makenna, sitting in the front, didn't expect a sudden sharp turn, and she managed to accidentally do her very first back flip off the side of the dinghy. I frantically reached around and grabbed her before we could drive off without her. Her life jacket had some very conveniently located straps that let me hold on and haul her back into the boat. Makenna has since proclaimed herself the superior dinghy driver since she has yet to throw a passenger overboard.

Unfortunately, in all the hullabaloo of Makenna discovering her new backflip abilities, the engine turned off. Justin had shown me how to start the engine before, but neglected to point out that it wouldn't start unless someone had remembered to shift it back to neutral. Someone may have forgotten and left it in gear while hauling desperately on the pull start. After a few minutes of yanking, my arm started to hurt, and I was not looking forward to spending the rest of my life in a dinghy with two preteen girls; they would absolutely eat me alive. And so I hefted up the oars and rowed us back to Dumbledore, alive, but only just.

After months of hard work, sweat, and more than a little blood, Justin's re-fit was complete. Dumbledore was ready to go...almost. While most of the tools were cleaned up, there was still nothing onboard to keep four humans and three cats alive for three months. That meant a lot of trips to BJs and last-minute packages from Amazon. I stopped getting excited after the fifth or sixth box which would contain, instead of something fun like new books or shoes, some random boat part.

There are no vegetables on this boat.

Once Dumbledore was crammed full of Poptarts, Doritos, and every other form of junk food Walmart had to offer, we gently convinced the cats to come onboard. They equally politely expressed their displeasure by howling, scratching, and peeing all over Justin.

Tiny was the first furry crew member to explore her new home. She struggles with stairs on land on a good day, and the steps into the two cabins were quite the challenge for her. It took her a while to figure out where exactly to put all of her legs.

She later just fell down the stairs.

The last step was inviting our final new crew members on board. They proceeded to bounce off all the walls and jump on everything in excitement. Somehow, once the jumping subsided, they slipped into their own personal bunks to dream of an awesome summer of water, sun, and adventure.

tl;dr: We got the boat ready to go on our summer trip with twelve-year-old Shianne and ten-year-old Makenna.