Tuesday, January 03, 2012 Life in the Boatyard

Wayne was dreaming of scaring the kids and roared in his sleep – scaring me awake at 1:00am! I guess he was dreaming about jumping out of the closet to scare them when they were little. Brrrrrrrr… It’s colddddd this morning. It seemed like I’d just gotten back to sleep when the phone rang at 5:45am… I forgot that sub-service was still calling me which means that I needed to turn off my phone until I got up and notified them that I’m no longer in Michigan. I got up and was going to make coffee and find Wally - the little Wally World heater we got a couple years ago (when our Espar heater ceased to work) - and discovered that we had no power. So I had to empty the little electric pot and turn on the alcohol stove and dig out the ole metal, stained with soot, coffee pot. I was glad that I’d already filled the alcohol canisters in the stove. Time to get used to using the stove again :)  Next, I went topside to check our electrical connection in the boat – it looked securely connected; next down the ladder to check the connection at the electrical pole. I never realized how cold a metal ladder is when the temperatures go into the 30s. Add to that thin t-shirt, sleeper shorts, and wet sandals and brrrrr…. The connections looked good from what I could see at 6:00am. It was still dark out. Back up the ladder after jiggling the wires and still no power. Screw it – it’s too dark and cold to keep running back and forth up – above deck, below deck, then up and down the ladder. Plus if I wanted to conserve what heat was in the boat I needed to close the companion way hatch each time. That’s kinda noisy activity in the quiet twilight - which would tend to wake up not only Wayne (if he’s sleeping) but the fellow boaters next to us.

After coffee and running down my computer batteries, it’s back to bed where it might be warmer. 43 degrees brrrr… the word for the day – brrrrr….

After Wayne got up, it was down the ladder for him to see if he could get the electrical working… no luck. Jiggle, jiggle, jiggle… anything yet? Nope. Now? Nope. He went to get his multi-meter… No luck switching sockets and couldn’t get a reading from the multicenter. He plugged the jig-saw into various sockets. No luck. Steve was in the yard now and said he’d check the main switch.

It had tripped.

With everyone running heaters etc… Last night the main was tripped. So if it happens again Steve showed me where to reset it on the main board. Back into the boat and the little heater is now dug out and putting out a bit of heat in the cabin. Yay!

I found my missing journal notes from last year. It might be a good day to catch up and write in my journal if it’s going to be too cold to put on bottom paint (it should be here today). Wayne tried to change the impeller and after both of us trying to get at it we decided to see if Eric could send someone to get it done for us. Maybe Thursday or Friday but definitely not tomorrow. The boat yard is starting to get busy again after the holiday.