From the 'oh, bugger me' files

Our boat has three a/c units. Never do we run all three at once, even with guests aboard.

But, last night, in the middle of the night the breaker to these a/c units kept tripping.

On a boat, if you have something electrical that keeps tripping, be concerned first and then very concerned soon after.

Nothing will ruin a cruise like a boat on fire.

Tim turned on the generator and started running a/c from it (bypassing the shore power breaker).

And yes, no breeze, 90 degrees and mosquitos from hell, we were running our a/c.

So, diagnostics begins.  First start at the scene of the crime....the breaker and whoops, there it is!
Fried wiring on the breaker.  Looks like the connection had worked loose, and when you have a high load situation and loose wiring, it's a gonna heat up in a hurry.  Bad, bad news.

Luckily, (on a Sunday, and a holiday to boot!) we were able to get a guy over to rewire it to get us through this trip and we'll get it totally rewired and redone later.  When we are not here, we don't run any high load items.

Moral of story, make sure all wiring connections on boat are clean, tight and not overheating.

you can see the scorch on the left side of the pic

Ding dong dinghy it.

After we established that we were holding fine, Tim started prepping the dinghy and the Torqeedo.  I got our bag ready with anything we would need to check in with the ranger.  We discussed the VHF, both agreed to put it in the bag.  (It didn't wind up in the bag--dual brain fart.)

So, I come up and I get. "We got a problem."  Seriously? Why do you do this to me, Tim?

Evidently while hooking up the Torqeedo and simultaneously bouncing off the stern of Elysium, one of the plugs didn't get aligned right and ZPPPPFFFT!  Torqeedo hath been shorted out.  Well, f*ck a duck.

Me--the eternal optimist (hah! blaming the scopalamine).  Well, baby. We gots oars.  After all, we've got years of experience not killing ourselves on the rivers of the Ozarks.  Oh, and a crazy kayak trip in Hawai'i that we. were. not. in. shape. for.

So, OFF goes the Torqeedo, into the dinghy I jump with the bag. Oh, did I mention? We forgot the VHF.

So, below pic perfectly shows our goal (ignore plane), nice dinghy beach.  It also shows the old coal dock pilings.  The first of which was constructed around 1861, yes, kids, when KANSAS BECAME A STATE!  The majority constructed around 1898 as a supply stop for the US Navy.

Beach or pilings? Beach or pilings?

So, as lovely as the water looks. We start rowing our little selves to the beach.  But not really, because we are now in a floating balloon in 17 kt winds broadside.  We are actually heading to Loggerhead Key, or Cuba, or Cayman Islands. Who knows?

So, the following motivational speech came forth:
"ROW KIM, ROW, ROW! WHAT ARE YOU DOING? ROW"

Reply:
"I AM M******F******"

For some reason, I thought if I sat inside the dinghy instead of on the tube that it would be okay. Not really, you don't get ample enough thrust off your oar if you don't have it at the right angle.

So, at this point, I said, Head for the pilings, young man!  What? You mean the partially submerged, wooden stakes poking out of the water?  YES. And there's also rusted iron, hope you have your tetanus shot.

So, we crash landed in the century+ old pilings, grabbed one and regrouped. So from there we would frantically oar from one to another, some having old line attached was awesome.  We finally got to the point where we had some wind protection and we could paddle like hell to the beach.  And we made it!

So, as we pulled the dinghy up on land, Mr. Park Ranger. (Ranger Simons, thankyouverymuch) a young guy, ex-military, said, hey! Was wondering if you were going to make it or not.  Yeah, us also, sir.  And....one of the first questions asked?  Did you bring your VHF?  To which we did some kicking of sand and said, we forgot it.  Hmmmmm.

Finally, I wanted to get off the "What were you dumbshits thinking" questioning, so I asked, hey, do we talk to you about checking in and paying our park fees?

He was very nice, and gave us a full tour of what we need to do, of course if you make yourself memorable and be polite, you'll be voted least likely to be arrested/ticketed on Thanksgiving day.  (story up shortly.)

List from hell

Here's the list after we took our first blue water sail.  Holy crap.  However, some of this list started before we ever left the dock.  I will address some of this in posts to follow.  See below for what we hammered out.

Generator:  Tim tested it in the dock and it ran for 5 minutes, sputtered and crapped out.  Then we got what every boat owner wants to see:  Water leak alarm on the generator panel.  So, we gots Mr. Generator put to bed.  Just found out today that there was a crap ass silicone 'patch' on the generator that failed and there's a lot of corrosion and dry hose.  So, if we had ran it, we most likely would have set the boat on fire. F*($k. We didn't, but now we have some big B.O.A.T. units to shell out to fix this problem.

OC tender:  To take a line from the musical Hamilton.  "You married a Icarus, and he's flown to close to the sun."  My boy dreamed big, but he dreamed bigger than what the little tender could handle.  So Zeus is dead.  (Pulp Fiction: Zed's dead, baby)  The the combination of the attachment points to the davits and the weight in the dinghy-and possibly the Key West summer heat-Zeus suffered some serious structural distortion.  If we had tried to keep her on the davits, even without the weight of the Torqeedo batteries, she would have shredded on our way to the Dry Tortugas.  Thankfully we didn't get rid of Tiny Dancer or the other Torqeedo yet, so we got them rigged up.

Senders:  Waste tank sender already fixed, it got stuck.  Water sender has bad threading and we can't get it fitted to our tank, so we will get it grinded to right threading or they will send new one.

Stern light: We replaced our nav lights with LEDs just to find out that now, they are always lit.  Long story short-because I am not the electrical guru on the boat.  The diode that leads from the main power switch of the electrical panel to the nav lights went bad, so there was a constant short that provided enough ampage to power an LED light.  Got that? No? Yeah. Email Tim if you want more info.  However, it got fixed after we got back, and Sparky is so proud of himself of that.  I got to sit at the back of the boat like a jackass going, IT'S ON, IT'S OFF, IT'S ON, IT'S OFF.

All things anchor: More details in a bit, but remote is bad, snubber needs upgraded, and where the chain meets nylon rode is not good. As in, jams up the windlass not good.

Propane/stove:  Tim installed new sensors for propane in the galley.  It's either placement or sensitivity, but the damn thing would go off as soon as I tried to cook.  So, I get something started in the oven, start the stove. BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEP and it does its job by killing the gas, but then I have to restart everything.  By now, the stove has had a bit of a build up of propane, so I'd open it and it would set off the sensor again.  Newly invented cuss words during cooking on the hook this time.  Generator shot, so no microwave.

I think the one thing is Front spot light, and more on that later.

Have boat, will break it.

Not me! Not me! Not me!

Okay, only one thing can be attributed to my spouse and his need to use the power winch in inappropriate manners.

So-----here goes: DON'T USE YOUR JIB SHEET POWER WINCH ON THE JIB FURLER. PERIOD.  Especially when the sail is under load, like 20kts under load.  The captain got demoted to Gilligan after that maneuver, but our furler guardian angels came and were able to fix without too much dent to our pocket book.  (and I got to sit there and smirk while they went to Tim--WTF did you do THAT for?)

But in my lovely husband's defense, he breaks the boat, I usually work on breaking myself.  Boat heals faster.

So our most recent trip, maybe because our luck has been SO fabulous lately, Tim suggests we try our windlass out before actually anchoring in a 2kt tidal zone.  Okay.

So what is supposed to be down only goes CLUNK CLUNK CLUNK. Anchor doesn't move. Shit.

After some debate, we still decide to go anchor out at Bahia Honda, there's absolutely no wind and if we can get the anchor and chain down and set, the boat will be fine.  Windlass is working in the UP position just fine.

So after three tries, we get anchor, some of it to do with the fact that Elysium handles like a tank, good in choppy waters and wave action, but not when you are trying to anchor amongst other boats and two bridge spans.  Of course, when we go to shore, the peanut gallery was there with their commentary.  To my credit, I didn't even say stuff it.

We did get some grief from the tour boat, but we were not blocking his way and he was in a twin screw pontoon--he could stuff it.

More pics of Bahia Honda later...  oh, and we are 0-2 in anchoring without incident in Bahia Honda. It's not a hard anchorage, but it seems to make our boats go...um, no.