P Is For Plane | Nancy Drew Investigates {A To Z Challenge}

During April, we're participating in the Blogging from A to Z Challenge. Every day (except Sundays), we'll be doing an alphabet themed post starting with "A is for Anchor" and ending with "Z is for Zodiac." Each post is an installment of "Nancy Drew Investigates the Case of the Missing Anchor" - so you may want to read the posts from the beginning, in order to follow along with the story (click here for the first post and here for an index of all the posts). At the end of each post, you'll also find some random thoughts on the day's particular topic. So, if Nancy isn't your thing, feel free to skip the story and go straight to the end.    

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When we last left you, the girls ran into Captain Gus on their way to the jetty. Nancy questioned him about his nephew Pete and the items that were stolen from the marina.

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“Girls, we’re going to stop by Spider Sapphire first and try some of the rum they got when they were in the Caribbean,” said Shelley. “We’ll go with them in their dinghy and then they’ll give us lift back to our boat. Why don’t you go ahead and take our dinghy back to our boat. You could probably do with a quiet night on the boat after all the excitement of the race today.”

Shelley and Marvin waved as they headed off across the anchorage.

“Darn it, I forgot to bring a flashlight. Do either of you happen to have one? It’s pretty dark out here and I can barely see the dinghy,” said Nancy as she made her way carefully down the jetty.

“Sorry, neither of us has one,” said George. “Here, I’ve got the painter. I’ll untie it while you two get in.”
A few minutes later, Nancy started the outboard engine and pointed them towards where The Scarlet Slipper was moored. Because there were only three of them in the dinghy, they were able to get it to plane and skim over the water quickly.

When they were a few feet away from the boat, the engine started making spluttering noises and then stopped running. Nancy tried restarting the engine repeatedly with no success. “Quick, grab the oars and starting rowing us towards the boat. This current is taking us out into the bay!”

Bess and George looked around but the oars were nowhere to be found. Bess shrieked, “We don’t have any oars? We’re going to drift out into the bay and be lost at sea forever!” As Bess started to sob, George asked Nancy, “Do you think we’re out of gas?”

“We shouldn’t be. Marvin topped up the tank before we left the boat this evening.” Nancy had a closer look at the outboard engine. “I really wish we had a flashlight, it’s so hard to see anything. Wait a minute - I think you’re right George. We’re out of gas! Somebody must have siphoned most of it out of the tank. We were lucky to have made it this far.”

“Who would do such a thing?” asked Bess.

“I don’t know. We’ll figure that out later. Right now, hand me that extra gas tank so I can get us going again. Fortunately, they must not have seen it tucked in the back of the dinghy.” said Nancy.

While Nancy disconnected the old tank and attached the new one, Bess looked nervously at the bay they were drifting into. “I bet it was that Captain Gus fellow. He sure looked dodgy to me. He tried to kill us by stealing our oars and making sure we ran out of gas. It was sabotage!”

Tune in on Wednesday for the next installment of Nancy Drew Investigates – Q is for Q Flag.

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The dinghy dock at Green Turtle Cay in the Bahamas. Which of these dinghies can plane? The dinghy on the far left is a Zodiac, which will be the topic of our Z post.

Some of you are probably confused. You saw "plane" in the title and you were expecting a proper airplane to make an appearance in the story. Sorry to disappoint, but "plane" in this case refers to making your dinghy whizz across the water. I guess it's kind of like an airplane in a way, flying across the water, but without the helpful flight attendants passing out headphones and charging you $5 for the pleasure.

Here's the bad thing about writing this Nancy Drew story. I've dreamed up new things to be worried about. It never occurred to me that someone might sabotage our dinghy, stealing the oars and gasoline, but now it's a worry. And, it's my own fault, because I came up with it for this story. No one else to blame for my paranoia but me. Sad, really.

We don't have to worry so much about our dinghy at night as we raise it up out of the water on davits, making it harder for bad people to get to it. When we take it to a dinghy dock, we lock it up. But, we can't really lock our oars or our gas tank, so they're fair game. I think the secret to avoiding sabotage is not to stick my nose into other people's business. Nancy just can't help herself.

What are your secret fears? Of course, by telling us about them in the comments, they won't really be secret anymore, but it will be quite cathartic. Does anyone else think that "cathartic" isn't a very pleasant sounding word? Go on, try saying it out loud a number of times. 

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