Magic dust

Sometimes boats and tools feels a bit like Santa and the Magic Dust. First some tools for the project are carried onto the boat. Then a few more tools get carried onto the boat, then a few more tools… (and if you get that reference you are giving away your age.) A spark chaser’s tool bag has strippers, crimpers, and cutters, with a couple of screw drivers and nut drivers. (Listed that way, it sounds a lot more interesting than it really is.) Other things in the bag, slip joint pliers, vice grips, measuring stick (rule to the lay person) and some other odds and ends get toted along but not often used.

A magic dust of a morning at Snead Island Boat Works

Then the job gets going and, what’s this - a hot wire wrapped a time or two around a fuel line? What fool did that?  Though one must admit, finding a wiring harness zip tied to fuel lines is pretty standard fare. So it's back to the golf cart for a flare nut wrench, maybe two; it being easier to undo the fuel line than splitting open a slimy harness (slime being what is left of electrical tape after a few decades deep in the damp parts of a boat). Later some holes need poked and some screws need set, so the boat gets a little more in the tool department, sniffing up drills, bits, and countersinks. Eventually, of course, the wiring harness needs split open anyway, so the valve cover bolts holding the clamps that hold the harness have to come out. This takes a ratchet, a short extension, and a socket. Hard to tell which socket though, since my calibrated eyeballs aren’t as accurate as they used to be, particularly in the dim recesses of an engine box. The bolts look to have 7/16 heads, so grab the 3/8 and 1/2 inch sockets as well and tote them to the boat. Later, the bracket holding some electrical gizmos that make timed sparks for the spark plugs needs to come off. It has bigger bolts. Maybe 9/16. The 1/2 is already laying around somewhere, but better grab the 5/8 as well. Oh, and a longer extension might save a bruised knuckle.

This goes on for a couple of days, tools rarely making it back off the boat since whatever was needed to get something off will clearly be needed to put it back on. Come the time when the job is finished or the powers-that-be need efforts focused on some other project, it will be amazing just how much magic dust the boat needed to sniff up to get all the goodies working as they should. Usually, right about this time, my old life making a living in airplane hangers launches a bit of paranoia my way. If there is one thing that chills the bones of an aircraft tech, it is the thought of some accident investigator pulling one of his or her tools out of the smoking wreckage of an airplane that just left the hanger. It is the main reason aircraft hangars are filled with orderly, carefully maintained rolling tool boxes filled with racks and slots.

Boat yards don’t have any such things. A wooden box on the back of the golf cart is considered rather plush. Mine has attracted comments because it has a couple of racks for sockets. Wrench sets are sequestered in custom made holders. Zippered bags hold punches, chisels and picks. It isn’t as professional as my old Snap-On roll-around, a style known as the “Taco Stand". Still, when it comes time to move on, making sure everything that got toted up on the boat is toted off is easier than just hoping that the pile of tools on the cart looks tall enough.

Truth to tell though, I’m not really sure it matters that much, except for the cost of replacing tools. In a boat, all kinds of things are left lying around in all kinds of scary places. Engine compartments are stuffed with loose jugs of oil and coolant, spare parts and loose junk stashed on pretty much any flat surface. Want to look at the batteries or generator? Move stuff out of the way first. When the flat surfaces are full up, plastic milk cartons, open-topped and unsecured, are a popular option for additional storage. I have found deck chairs lying on top of engines and boxes of parts sliding around on top of fuel tanks. And batteries…apparently battery boxes have some kind of attracting power for pressurized cans of things that can go “boom” in the dark.

Cockpit lockers are often even more scary. Life jackets, coils of line, boat hooks, and fishing nets get jammed into the same holes that provide access to rudder posts, steering cables, and autopilot rams. How it is that things keep working while being tossed around in a rambunctious sea is beyond me, but a forgotten wrench or screw drivers isn’t much of an additional threat.

Then again, maybe a touch of the magic dust helps?