Friday November 18th, 2016
Got up before 06:00 which is the norm for me. I felt like I was walking uphill on my way out of the aft cabin. Vertigo? A stroke? I kept checking things… If part of the boat is higher than another then perhaps the boat is sinking. Checked the bilge, nothing there, not sinking. Must be a stroke. Continue to make coffee with the sense that something isn’t quite right. Decided to get some pics of the marina for the blog and noticed the problem right away.
Apparently during the night we had an extremely high tide due to the moon being so close and that was followed by an extremely low tide. FRACAS slid forward and hung her nose up on the piling at the dock. Hence we have a bit of a bow up list, No stroke. This is another of those problems at sea that can be fixed by the tide coming up. It can’t come up quick enough for me though. I did try impulse power at full but she will not come off the pole. High tide is at 10:00 or 11:00 so we should be free in time to leave the marina. The bowsprit has had several ordeals on our travels including hitting a 4″ square steel tube square on at Hoppie’s on the Mississippi.
Reasonable internet here so tried to use the computer and the video link to Chris Parker’s weather broadcast. Chris obviously has a cold, a bad cold. It is difficult listening to a guy tell you the weather seems to be ok while coughing, gagging and chocking. I didn’t want to touch the keyboard in case I got what he had. Hard enough trying to identify which mosquitos are carrying the Zika virus.
I think FRACAS has the Zika virus. We have had our share of problems this season. I guess 35 year old stuff ( off warranty ) will fail from time to time. The starter was likely original equipment for this boat. The case had 1979 on it and the paint matched the engine so it likely came with the boat.
My batteries did not come with the boat. In 2012 I made the investment in a house bank with four L16H-AC 6 volt batteries. These are the tall babies that are equal to 2 T-105’s. You boaters will know what I mean. That gave me 870 AHrs full load and I usually didn’t deplete them more than 100 to 150 AHrs before charging. I religiously kept them topped up with distilled water (they got better water than we did). What I did not do as religiously is equalize or exercise them. Basically overcharge them to stir them up and make them think about what they are doing. Now I have to do this at least once a month to maintain these babies. The other thing I did differently this summer, I disconnected the batteries from everything. Normally I would leave them in the hands of the solar system.
In order to pick up the batteries we needed some form of transportation. I had abused borrowing Rolly’s car so we decided to rent for the day. They gave us a Versa, Vice or Vice Versa something like that. The service, car and everything were ok…except for the tape goo.
Every opening on the car has tape goo. It looks like the doors, trunk and hood have been taped shut. It is unlikely that this vehicle can achieve speeds that would require additional security on the flappy parts. I asked, “What is that”? pointing at the goo. He said “Oh when they ship cars they tape them shut”. The car has 11,000 miles on it. How could tape goo be on a car for that long? Perhaps some poor bastard wouldn’t pay and they taped him in.
Here are some pictures of the marina and area.
