23 January 2025
We have had the equivalent of an arctic chill here in Marathon the last couple of days. Yesterday, I never got off the boat due to it being a cold, windy day. Today was better. After pumpout, Clark spent the morning trying to get our new Nest thermostat from yesterday's service call at our house connected to our account. Unfortunately, there's no way to set it up remotely as it requires someone on the same local network. To get around this problem, he was working with a neighbor to get it connected, but the Nest kept going dark as if there was a loose connection.
I spent the afternoon at the club house working on a nasty, difficult jigsaw puzzle in the company of the bartender who had no customers to speak of for most of the day. While I was hovering over the jigsaw puzzle, Clark was on a friend's boat working on his battery problem. He found a lug on the alternator that had a bad connection and was getting hot. This prevented his alternators from charging his house bank, which is now suffering from chronic undercharging. That kept him busy until almost dinner time. After that, he spent a lot of time on the phone working, once again, on the Nest thermostat problem at our house with a repairman on site. This is the third service call in a month. Now, we have a new Honeywell thermostat that we control remotely. We'll see how this one works out.
We have our own boat problems. When I used the washing machine onboard earlier this week, I found a large puddle of water under the machine afterwards. Somewhere we have a leak. Clark pulled the top and the back off and found the connections and the water fill hoses to the tub were all dry. This leaves the pump, the tub seal and the drain hose connection on the bottom as possible sources. This requires removing the washing machine which requires removing the hand rail, the steps to the pilot house, the steps to the engine room, an ER closet, the doors and front panel to the washer, and the front and hold-down trim around the washer. At that point, the unit can be raised up to the hallway where it is possible to access the bottom of the washer. Hopefully, it can be fixed there. If it needs to be replaced, it would have to be hoisted up and removed via a fixed front pilothouse window.
Weather, washing machines, and other people's battery issues seem like nothing compared to the action we had this evening. As I worked on making dinner, Clark came flying through the boat and then raced back outside again. It was almost dark. Clark was outside taking out some recycle cardboard as he heard people yelling "HELP"!
A boat had overturned and people were in the water calling for HELP. He quickly dialed 911 to call for assistance. He tried to find someone with a dinghy already in the water to help, but he found no one on the boats he tried; it would talk another 15 minutes to lunch our dinghy. He thought he saw 4 people in the water - 3 hanging onto the overturned white hull and a 4th one drifting off to the SE.
The Coast Guard came quickly and picked up two people. The overturned boat was left to drift to shore. From the USCG, we learned that there were only two hanging onto the boat, and the "person" drifting away in the dark was just something floating away from the overturned boat.
Clark estimated the water temperature to be around 68 degrees. It is a real good thing Clark heard their call for help and even better that the USCG station is in close proximity to the marina.
24 January 2025
Picture of boat next morning
No comments:
Post a Comment