Impromptu Boatwarming

AKA Noah’s Revenge

Payday was Friday, so I bolstered up the sagging US economy on Saturday by going to West Marine and Home Depot to buy supplies.  Glue is remarkably expensive, they should probably stop making it out of racehorses.

I arrived at Indian Summer at the crack of 11 on Sunday and quickly checked the old jib in preparation for getting a new one – in fact the old one is a little small, which makes perfect sense when compared against measurements I’ve gotten off the interweb.  Item 1 accomplished.  I moved on to item 2, epoxying up the engine well to make a more secure platform.  I drilled out a lot of the rotted wood so the epoxy could soak in, then mixed up a batch and pored it.  The clamps I was planning to use on it were too small, so I used string to hold the delaminated wood tight while it dried instead.  Check off item 2.   A little epoxy in a crack on the cabin hatch, check item 3.  Time to stabilize the chart table leg with the wood pieces I found at Home Depot, item 4 complete, just needs time to dry.  On to install the new VHF.  I ripped out the old one, plugged the antenna cord into the new one then the power cord.  Oh dear.  They’re different.  Umm.  Now what do I do?

First, try again.  Nope, still don’t fit.  Remember when you were a toddler and you had that toy which had different shaped holes and you were supposed to put the square into the square hole and the triangle into the triangle hole and not just find a rock and whack them till they jammed in?  Yeah, it was like that.  I restrained myself and turned on my phone to call my brother for advice – being that he’s a Henschel, it would have started out "Do you have a hammer on board?"

I had a message!  From Miles!  Offering to come help me work on the boat on Sunday!  For anyone who doesn’t know Miles, he is a computer guy who I think did some sort of engineering degree and is very, very bright, not to mention incredibly nice to volunteer.   So I called him, asked if he knew anything about electronics and he showed up half an hour later with a soldering iron and a very large tool set.  The wiring knew it had met its match and only sparked briefly before we unplugged the battery.  Turns out whoever installed the old radio hadn’t bother to insulate the wires at all which is a trifle dangerous.

The new radio works beautifully now.  Yay Miles!!!       (Karen – sorry I couldn’t wait for your visit – I’ll find more electronic stuff for you to do)

So now we get to the boat warming.  Cara called.  She and Noah wanted to stop by as Noah had yet to see the boat. 

Interesting factoid: Despite being named for a famous biblical sailor, Noah doesn’t like water or boats.

However, I didn’t think he would stoop so low as to try to burn my boat down.  There was an uninsulated wire sticking out of the compass wiring.  Miles thought it looked like it had fallen out of a piece of electrical tape so Noah said "Let’s see," stripped off the tape, wound the two wires together and went to put the tape back on.  Miles said "Shouldn’t you check it first?"  He gets a second gold star for saying that.  Upon turning on the compass switch: 

SPARKS     FLAMES      SMOKE 

It was scary.  The problem was that one was a red wire and one was a black wire so they shorted each other out.  We never did figure out what they are for, but now they are very short and covered up separately with electrical tape. 

And Cara really liked my comment on the whole situation

"I didn’t like the sound of that smell."