Oh what a difference a letter makes

dingy

adjective din·gy \ˈdin-jē\

: dark and dirty : not fresh or clean

dinghy

noun din·ghy \ˈdiŋ-ē, -gē\

: a small boat that is often carried on or towed behind a larger boat

This is what was on the bottom of our dinghy this afternoon when we hauled it out of the water with our spare halyard. That would be after only 4 weeks in the water here at the dinghy dock. It was the most disgusting stuff we have ever had on the dinghy before and it took both of us 4-1/2 hours of scraping, brushing, scrubbing, rinsing and wiping to get it all off, not to mention the half hour it took to clean the deck of the slop afterwards. I was so tired that I forgot to take the after pics. This was absolutely the weirdest stuff we've ever had on the bottom as well. It highly resembled teddy bear fur when we first lifted it out of the water. It turned out, though, to be full of tiny little muscle-like shells. Almost no barnacles to speak of, but I gotta tell you that if I had my druthers, I'd much rather scrape off barnacles than this stuff. We reeked so bad after doing this all day that I had to make a special run up to the marina to wash our clothes. Cleaning the dink is one of those frequent duties that most of the cruising glossies forget to mention. Care to guess why?