Special Peeps

I always talk about the "Peeps", the people we meet while we're out here cruising on the boat. Occasionally we run across some really special Peeps worth mentioning. Martijn Dijkstra is one of those.

We first met Martijn in 2013 when we were stuck in Oriental for some engine trouble on Kintala. We spent a month on the dock then, and had a chance to spend some quality time with him. Martijn is from Holland and has sailed extensively on both his first boat, Rotop, and his current boat, Prinses Mia, named after his daughter. Prinses Mia is a prime example of everything that makes a long distance cruising boat a worthy life. Everything is painted in splashes of brilliant color, from the freeboard, deck and wheelhouse to the interior woodwork to the sails and sail cover. It's filled with an eclectic combination of the modern useful and the historical classic. In every corner you look there are touches of his engineering genius and of his resourcefulness. Bits and pieces of salvaged boats are placed about—ship models that belong in a museum, a wooden wheel from a sunken tugboat, a ship's engine order telegraph, a huge iron coffee grinder, backsplash tiles handcrafted in Holland, a hanging oil lamp, a wood-burning stove, and polished bronze and wood everywhere—most of it acquired from the dumps in various harbors he's visited, other things traded and bartered for, a good bit of it handcrafted by Martijn himself. Martijn has an amazing talent of being in the right place at the right time.

A while back Drake Paragon did a 3-part miniseries about Martijn on his first boat. It's well worth the watch.

Martijn is the rare individual that's at home with both the sea and his fellow humans, and you feel immediately comfortable lounging among the collection of parts he's amassed into this floating home, listening to the tales of his travels interspersed with laughter. If you're lucky enough to run into him, you'll step off the boat and go on your way with a smile. And leaving your fellow humans with a smile is a bit of a lost art these days, so I'll take it. 

Just Poking Along...

Time has slowed to a bit of a crawl as I recover. I feel pretty good all things considered, but there is still a dull but persistent ache around the implant, and the wound has yet to heal over completely. Normally being this inactive would result in a serious case of boredom driving both of us crazy. But I am kind of enjoying not having much to do. Deb and I take long walks and indulge in an occasional treat at The Bean. Much of my time is spent making music with the various Ukes we brought along. Deb puts her guitar (and the baritone Uke) to regular use as well. The electric table top drum kit and pan drum have remained silent as I am not convinced my left side can take a drum pounding.  I also spend a lot of time just watching the world go by from the fly bridge or aft deck. Dolphins, otters, fish, and a squad of different birds spend the day ruffling the waters around our slip. Though I don't really understand why, I am encouraged by the knowledge that they would be doing what they do regardless of me being around to watch, or not. All of human kind will disappear at some point in a cosmic second, with our entire history forgotten, and the universe will not even notice. Knowing that, one would think we would treat each other better than we do. Evidence, perhaps, that we are not nearly as intelligent as we think we are.

Though dogging along at the moment, we are slowly getting back to the routine of getting ready to go. A day or so ago the good folks from the engine shop dropped off the revived Dink motor. Not only did they deliver it, but they mounted it on the Dink and fired it up. It takes a bit of a pull to get it started but Deb handled it without problem. It will be a while before I am yanking on the thing. After they left we took the Dink out for a short cruise, me sitting in the front. I was never particularly comfortable in Kintala's Dink. First Light's, with its hard floor and bigger motor, should soften my dislike for Dink travel. As should have been expected, one of those center console fishing boats cut in front of us during the test run, throwing a pretty good wake. Deb slowed up and turned bow in, but I got a bath anyway. For some reason they slowed down about the time water came pouring over our bow. I guess pulling one's head out of one's ass is still better done late then never. Since I enjoy anchoring out far more than being on a dock, Dink travel is a necessity—even with the occasional waterway bonehead encounter. But I don't have to like it.

With the motor mounted and the test ride over, we gave the new lifting rig its first real test. It worked better than the old rig but it is still a serious bit of lift for a single person to handle. There were many times on Kintala that, after a long day's sail, we were just too tired to wrestle the Dink into the water, mount the engine, and go exploring. Something we do not want to be the case with First Light. So we wandered down to the hardware store and then the marine supply store to see what we might come up with to make Dink launch and stow easy. At the second stop we found a small used winch that appeared to be in pretty good shape. They were willing to part with it for a fraction of a boat buck. We mounted it in the aft cockpit which gave us the final bit of lift we need to get the dink and motor out of the water with just a modest amount of effort. Once we were sure it would work, we added a small cleat and a thing to hold the winch handle and line when the Dink is up and secured.

Dow Corning 795 is awesome stuff for bedding
hardware of any kind

It was a project I thought easy enough to tackle without compromising my recovery. But (now don't be surprised) we got into things a bit deeper than anticipated by pulling the haws horn unit to see if it provided access to mount a backing plate for the winch. Getting it free of the aft bulkhead turned into a wrestling match that was more than enough for my left side. Deb took over and the unit eventually admitted defeat and came free. Unfortunately, it didn't provide the access we thought since there is a solid block of wood that the haws is mounted through.  We had hoped that the wood was big enough to catch the winch as well, but it didn't work out that way. After some debate we installed the winch as close to the wooden support as we could. It should work since the load is strait shear, but we will see. One thing is sure, getting the Dink + Motor up and on the swim platform is one-person easy now. I managed to rejoin the fray by drilling a few holes and installing some screws. 

There are other things I should be able to do. Another coat of teak oil on the rails as well as prepping and oiling the steps up to the fly bridge are high on my list. Those steps have been left raw. For me teak left to weather “naturally” marks a boat as wrecked, abandoned, or neglected. (Your opinion may very, no offense intended.) It is our experience that teak oil doesn't make things too slippery to walk on and, with the rest of the boat starting to look pretty good, those steps stand out as major ugly.

While down in the engine room working on some lighting, Deb found a failed fastener on a shaft seal that also held the bonding wire. That will have to be addressed before we head out, but will have to wait a couple of weeks. My arm is not yet up to that kind of work in a confined space.

So we poke along pretty pleased that just poking along is still an option.

On being still

From where I sit in the cockpit, the still water is like glass, save for a very occasional ripple from a stray breeze. The cormorants, perched like yogis on the pilings of the abandoned dock next to us, spread their wings to dry in the late-day sun. The gulls swoop by just inches from the water, looking for their evening meal and offering their signature laugh as they execute a perfect hammerhead stall to repeat the glide in the other direction. The little silver fish they hunt flip and jump joyously, evading their captors. In the water just behind the boat, the jellyfish glide silently, their bells pulsing rhythmically.

Exiting the chaos that was last week and being transported here has been a bit of a shock. Every few minutes my mind replays the incidents of those few days, unbidden like an endless screen saver, images I fear will be forever burned there. But being here, in this place of peace, forced to stop what is for many a frenetic pace of life and just be still...is a gift, however much it nearly cost us.

When was the last time you just sat still? No phone, no TV, no computer, no tablet no Pandora. Just still. Many of us can’t even do it. We panic. How much is missed by our frenzy?

Stillness is an exercise that must be deliberate and practiced, and one I confess I avoid too often. I’m a doer. So much so that even my grandkids have stated to complete strangers that “DeMa is happiest when she has a project.” Cruising on a boat certainly offers opportunity to experience stillness—the quiet anchorage at the end of the day, the star-filled sky, the sunrise as you start the day's journey—but often the pressure of weather and The List steal away the stillness even on a boat.

This place, this sudden wrenching of our plans from our control, have forced me to stop. To be still. To realize in a very real way that we have a place in the network that is the natural life around us. It’s restorative. It’s calming. It’s peaceful. And right now, it’s the healing that we both need.

What it is

It has been a bit over a week since our plans got changed by my unanticipated visit to the cardiac ICU. At the one week check-up they downloaded a data dump from the thing in my chest. Apparently my heart fires normally 96% of the time, leaving the other 4% (a bit less than once a minute average) to be aided with a small jolt. At that rate, the battery life is estimated at 15 years. I was deemed as “doing just fine.” The bandage over the wound, which had grown to be more than a little irritating, was removed. The wound itself was also reported as "doing just fine". So now it is just a matter of waiting out the weeks it will take for the muscle to heal. Though limited to what can be done with my left arm, I'm not completely useless. (No snide remarks please.)

With Deb doing the heavy lifting, we assembled and installed a lift point for the dinghy at the aft starboard corner of the aft deck roof. With a newly purchased 8 to 1 block set at a much better (almost vertical) angle for the initial pull to get the thing out of the water, levering the Dink up onto the swim platform, motor and all, should be far less trying. We also added a U-bolt to the swim platform so the rig can be cleanly stowed but easily at hand when the Dink is in the water. The whole rig looks more “ship-shape” than did the one we were using. That one had the lines from two different block sets strung all the way across the aft deck to the top of the ladder up to the flybridge. We are waiting on the Dink motor to arrive after roughly 3/4 of a boat buck worth of work. Once it is mounted to the dink transom we will put the rig to the real test. It should be fine. As is usual for us, we likely overbuilt the anchor for the new lift point to some ridiculous degree. Other projects to help while away the weeks are mostly bright work and, maybe, some interior repairs. All things I can do without over taxing the still healing bits of my anatomy.

The enforced slow pace of my day makes time for sitting in the fly bridge, drinking coffee and watching nature do her thing with utter disregard to whatever foolishness us pesky humans might be up to. (I'm assuming the foolishness continues though we are not really paying much attention.) Thousands of little silver fish take to jumping in the mornings, ruffling the water and making it sound identical to rain. We are not sure what they are doing but cormorants and sea gulls swoop in for breakfast while larger birds, hawks and vultures, fly top cover. Dolphins can often be seen out in the river, casually broaching in a lazy way that suggests they are just poking around. Sunset and sunrise paint the waterscape with colors never seen in the city. There are no towering buildings in sight. With the exception of the bridge, the tallest structures around are the trees.  

Deb and I take long walks back to our old slip and then into town. My new heart control logs the “activity time” all by itself and blue tooth's the info to my phone. When necessary the info can be transmitted pretty much anywhere in the country. (The Borg weren't kidding when they claimed "Resistance is futile".) Often we chat with other live-a-board folks as we go. Sometimes we sit on another's boat and tell sea stories. Sometimes they wander over to our new parking place and come aboard. It all reminds me of a) how lucky I am and b) how much I enjoy this lifestyle. Once we get underway, there are plans to have various grandkids rotating on and off the boat, giving us some extra crew and them a chance to see what DeMa and Grampy T are doing while away. Eventually we will end up in St. Louis, mixing the two lifestyles together with the boat always available for an adventure. But for now we make the boat pretty, take it easy, and wait until it is time to go. Not bad considering what it is...and what it could have been.

The view of First Light from the bridge. First Light is in the center of the picture back 
near the tree line

After the storm...

Deb cranked up First Light yesterday morning and with the help of good friends we have made here in  Oriental, moved the boat about a half mile under the bridge and to a new marina. This one has floating docks so, once First Light was securely tied starboard side-to, I could get onboard using just one arm. Though less than a half mile away from the old slip, at the new one the boat rests an entirely different environment. Further from the bridge and around a bit of a corner into a small feeder creek, it is much quieter with very little fetch. The boat barely moves. All in all it is about as perfect a place to recover from the events of the last couple of days that one can imagine.

I was standing on the new dock as Deb pulled the boat in. There was no hint that this was her first time at the helm of a twin-engined trawler. Friends handled lines and helped her set fenders while I, under strict orders not to do anything dumb that would compromise my new accessory's install, didn't touch a thing. Though the boat is available, we will spend a couple of days in a hotel close to the hospital, just in case. After that, we will move back onto the boat, enjoy Oriental, and head off when this beat up old bod of mine is up to the task.

Our plans to do the Northern half of the Great Loop to St. Louis this year have, obviously, been derailed. It will be a couple of months before I can safely travel by boat as my left arm is, for all practical purposes, inoperable. The pacemaker is lodged between the muscle and skin that makes that arm go. It is vital that scar tissue forms around it and the electrical leads now imbedded in the heart muscles before I start using it for much more than scratching my nose. So I am recuperating in one of the prettiest places I have ever found in US waters. In a couple of months we will head off with the intent of taking one of the slowest passages up the ICW ever, landing in the north end of the Chesapeake Bay in the fall and putting First Light on the hard for the winter. Come spring we will pick up our journey, ending up in St. Louis sometime next year.

Messages, texts, emails, and phone calls have flooded in as news of the little episode spread, and I am deeply touched by all of the good thoughts and expressions of support. A life filled with good people is a good life. Mine is a really, really good life.

At least I can still play ukulele with the left hand!

Sunrise from the hotel this morning

Unexpected Chaos

cyborg

/ˌsaɪˈbɔrg/

noun

 a human being whose body has been taken over in whole or in part by electromechanical devices

synonyms:bionic man,

I am sitting in a hotel room after 2 nights in a hospital where I survived my very own near death experience. My heart simply stopped beating. The first attack came around 2 in the afternoon. I was laying back on the sofa on the boat after some easy buffing and polishing. A strange vertigo like haze (there are no words I know that can explain what was happening) flushed over me, instantly provoking a chaotic dream-like state too convoluted to describe. I came to with Deb shaking me and shouting my name, a look of panic on her face. I had been completely unresponsive for nearly a minute.

I came back completely disoriented, flowing with sweat, and barely able to move. Just sitting up was a long journey needing assistance. A 911 call brought help in the form of four large EMT workers who got me off the boat, into an ambulance, and to the ER a half hour drive away. It was the longest half hour I have ever endured. The vertigo-like experience was accompanied by a body-wide feeling of a brutal heart burn compounded by a feeling of complete dissociation. Every time the vehicle went around a corner or hit a bump the entire world dissolved into chaos. I had no idea what was wrong and, regardless of the multiple times I have managed to wreck myself, I don’t recall ever hurting that bad. The 911 crew was pumping in all kinds of drugs, none of which seemed to make any difference. Once in the ER, things didn’t improve much. They sat me in a chair and pushed me off to the side because they were so busy. The ride in the chair was as torturous as the ride in the ambulance. I clung onto Deb’s hand and the armrests, barely managing to stay in the seat. There was nothing but chaos and hurt. 

For what was roughly another (endless) half hour I was engaged in a relentless battle with a foe I couldn’t see and didn’t understand. After an eternity, someone finally got me on a gurney and connected up a heart monitor. The cause became apparent. My heart rate would plummet to 20 or less, the hurt and disorientation would become intense, then my heart would pick up the pace a little so I could hang on. That was what was happening. Why it was happening remained unknown. At one point my heart rate dropped to zero for more than 20 seconds. The alarms went off but no one noticed except Deb. She charged off to find help while the chaos and hurt returned to overrun the world. Somehow I struggled back from wherever it was that a heart rate of zero leaves you. But the 20 second flat line of a heartbeat was in the data file. Another eternity seemed to pass before an ER Doctor who could make some decisions saw the monitors. According to Deb he became more than a little angry and off I went to get a temporary pace maker probe installed through the right side of my neck and into my heart.

The first event on the boat happened at 2:28 pm. It was nearly 10:00 pm before I was wheeled into the Cardiac ICU, the temporary pacemaker finally bringing some relief. Over the course of the longest night ever, the device recorded having to step in to keep my heart going on at least 8 different occasions. The next morning the decision was made to implant a permanent and more sophisticated pacemaker near my left collarbone. I got out of the OR around 3:26. By 6:15 I was awake, eating, sitting up, with the chaos that had been my world collapsed back into one I recognized. And, to be fair, the care I received by the team in the Cardiac ICU was nothing short of excellent. For all of my practice, I am not a particularly good patient. But they took the best possible care of me during those initial hours of recovery. 

This afternoon I was discharged and now sit in a hotel near the hospital, just in case. The view out the window is of the river. The sky is quiet and blue.

If it had not been for the delay with the Dink motor we would have been in an isolated anchorage miles from any kind of help when the first event happened. There is little to no chance I would have survived the subsequent series of attacks. But now, except for the wounds inflicted by the temporary pacemaker wire run through the right side of my neck, the permanent install near my left collarbone, and four different places where IVs were inserted or blood was drawn, I am fine. My left shoulder is sore and it will be a few weeks before I will be allowed to lift that arm above shoulder height or reach across my torso. This is to give the pacemaker and the leads to my heart a chance to become buried in tissue and secured in place. I now fit the textbook definition of a cyborg. The thing is bluetooth enabled and can report my condition to a doctor half way across the country. It can also be adjusted as necessary. 

In the next day or so Deb and friends will move First Light from her current slip to a nearby marina that has floating docks. The move will make it possible for me to get on and off the boat over the six weeks or so I’m told it will take to fully recover. After that we will start a slow trek north with the goal of having First Light in the northern Chesapeake bay by fall. There she will go up on the hard until spring when we will splash once again to finish the trip to St. Louis. This is all very tentative but it is a good plan to start from. As the next few weeks of sitting on the boat in a beautiful place and in a quiet town we love pass, I will try to make sense of these last few days.

But I suspect that will not be possible. Nor, in a most basic way, does it matter. This is the day we have. What tomorrow will bring is mystery.

"Would you like to see some turtles?"

Deb and I were minding our own business, just walking along to see some old friends from St. Louis whose boat is up on the hard in a nearby marina. It was a perfect afternoon for a walk through the quiet streets of Oriental and it is fair to say that a question about seeing turtles was far beyond the last thing I was expecting. Yet that is exactly the question the elderly lady stepping down from her golf cart offered up for our consideration. Generally speaking I am not much for chatting with strangers. And a question about turtles? Some kind of trick question that will land me on a YouTube channel or something? On the other hand it was such an odd question that saying “no thank you” wasn't really an option either. One of the reasons for living on a boat is to see different things in different places. So we followed her between a couple of houses and out to the small canal that runs through parts of Oriental. 

There we found three additional women tossing food scraps into the muddy water. We didn't see “some” turtles. There were dozens and dozens of turtles gathered around to get their share of the bounty. Some were honking big snapping turtles, the kind that can cleanly remove a finger or two with a single bite. It looked like there were some other kinds of turtles in there as well, though herpetology isn't my thing. 

As far as one could see up and down the channel from where we stood, turtle heads popped up, looked for a path through the melee, then disappeared in a little ring of wavelets. This was, after all, a turtle feeding frenzy and not some shark or orca attack. It was all happening in a clumsy kind of slow motion. Turtles can't leap out of the water to snatch their meal out of the air. But they can find a conveniently sized companion and crawl aboard. Not only does this get them closer to the food, it shoves a competitor down into the mirk. Of course, being turtles, they might not be quick enough to avoid being the stepping stone for the next turtle in line. Ancients who believed that the earth was flat claimed that a giant turtle carried it through the cosmos on its shell. When asked what the turtle was standing on the answer was “It's turtles all the way down”. Turtles all the way down though, in this case, the bottom of the stack was likely just a foot or two into the mud. Still, it was more turtles than either Deb or I have ever seen all in one place.

As it turned out, the ladies providing the food do this every evening right around 5:00. It seems that turtles have some sense of time because they gather around every evening to get their share. The whole thing was delightfully bizarre. Eventually we had to say our thank-you's and goodbyes and be on our way. But is was one of those stories that will be bringing up a smile every time it is told.

Hurry Up and Wait

As mentioned in Tim's previous post, we somehow neglected to decide to work on the outboard first when we arrived two weeks ago, which would have allowed the shop it inevitably found its way to sufficient time to fix it before we were ready to leave. As a result, we finished the "have to do before we leave" list two days ago and now we're waiting on the outboard repair.

Since neither Tim nor I seem to be able to Just Sit and Do Nothing, we're moving on to some of the less pressing issues on the boat. One of the things nagging at me was the fact that we have a lot of heavy stuff stored under the pullman berth, at the forward end of which is one of the air conditioning units with the ever-so-delicate cooling fins just waiting to be smashed with a parts box tossed by a too-enthusiastic ICW traveler's wake. I'd given some thought to how I might section it off without restricting the inbound airflow, so a trip to the local hardware store was in order.

The local hardware store, Village Hardware & Marine Supply, is a small-town hardware store with some amazing treasures tucked into dusty corners for the shopper willing to peruse the aisles for a time. I was hoping for some of that perforated tin that comes in sheets that I could mount in front of the unit in some sort of frame. After some long discussion with the guys who work there (they know me by name now), one of the guys who is nick-named MacGyver went out back to see what he might find in their storage area. He came back a few minutes later with an old display shelf that was destined for the dumpster. It was absolutely perfect. If you had custom designed the thing you could not have done a better job. A few screws, washers, and L-brackets later and I had the perfect partition to protect the unit.

Tim has been busying himself with teak work. The teak rail on the sides of the boat had been finished with Captain's Varnish and I can't possibly describe how much we hate that stuff. Our intention is to do the teak in Awlwood finish because we loved it on Kintala but that will be a St. Louis project as it's more involved to do it well than we have time for now. The peeling Captain's Varnish was sharp on your hands as you used the rail so, for the time being, we just wanted to sand it off and get some teak oil on it till we get back to St. Louis. Took him two days, but it looks great and it's soooo much nicer on the hands.

I've been doing some organizing and rearranging of cabinets and such to make things accessible where they should be. One of the things I did was to move some racks that were in the wrong place for us to where they were more useful. After the fiasco that was the horrendous storm last week, we discovered we needed a place to keep our coffee cups and water bottles when not in use. These served well.

I spent a full day cleaning the flybridge this weekend with a Magic Eraser and some Better Life All Purpose Cleaner. I figure if I keep telling you how amazing this stuff is then you'll break down and buy some. (And, no, I don't have any relationship with the company other than buying a truly quality product that works even better than they claim.) I only brought a quart of the concentrate and I should have brought the whole gallon. We.Use.It.On.Everything. Then yesterday while I was at the store, Tim tackled some of the green moldy stuff that had built up on the sides of the flybridge and the cockpit. I really think he just wanted to play with his new toy - a deck wash down! He loves the thing and it makes it so much easier to do some of the deck cleaning, something we needed badly after hauling the anchor chain out of the chain locker to check the length markings and the general condition of the chain. 

I also spent some time organizing the cave that is the upper helm storage area. You seriously could sleep four of our grandkids in there and, as a result, it tends to accumulate stuff. I bought some of these bags and they worked so well I got another set. One for our air conditioner cord, one for our super long extension cord, one for our hose, one for extra lines...I may eventually order even one more set because they work so well.

Things are winding down to Departure Day now as can be seen by the fact that I'm route planning and reinstalling weather apps that had lain dormant the 4 years we were on land. The Navionics subscription has been updated and routes from here to my nephew's house in the Chesapeake have been entered. Now all we have to do is hurry up and wait.

Nothing much to do

With the exception of the Dink motor being in the shop, we woke up in the morning with nothing pressing on the to-do list. I decided it would be a good day to learn a bit more about the capabilities of the chart plotter / radar system. I haven't really used the thing much and we are getting close to trying to find St. Louis with it. So I threw the breaker, grabbed the ops manual, climbed into the flybridge, popped the cover off of the working-last time-we-turned-it-on C80 Reymarine chart plotter, and pushed the power button. 

You guessed it, nada. Well, not entirely nada, just a screen that was mostly dark and slightly wonky. It looked like the same problem we had seen earlier (which didn't show up on the sea trial). At that time, a search of the internet suggested the problem lay with the ribbon connection at the screen itself.  Fixing it was described as "anyone can do it" by some, "a nightmare job consisting of hundreds of tiny screws and easily broken parts" by others. It worked fine during the trip here, but we had a tech come out to take a look anyway. But the thing was working fine and it is hard to fix what doesn't appear to be broke. But it was broke once again.

After a few words of disgruntlement, Deb and I debated the options: a) call the tech back in, b) give in and buy a new unit, or c) try to fix the thing ourselves. Decisions...decisions.

Deb went below to look for some more info. I sat looking at the kaput chart plotter feeling a fair bit of irritation at the thought of spending some more unexpected boat bucks. Mine has been a lifetime of fixing things. Most of the time I got whatever it was that was broken working again. Once in a while the whatever it was was broken to the point where trying to fix it didn't make a lot of sense, which didn't always prevent me from trying. But I am more of a power plant / systems kind of big wrench mechanic, not really a dig-into-the-electronics-with-delicate-little-screwdrivers type. In my old aviation days, mechanics would say that all of the fancy avionics boxes worked with "magic smoke". When the smoke leaked out it would quit working. Smoked-out boxes were "R & Rd" which means removed and replaced. The box that had leaked out all of its magic smoke was sent to the avionics shop.  A place clean, filled with fancy test gear, air conditioned, quiet, and usually had a coffee maker in the corner. Nothing like a hangar floor. I took one more look at the C80. The wonky screen looked like a sneer. I reached for some tools. 

The front of the unit popped off with little trouble. The next layer came free with a dozen or so screws that really were kind of tiny. The layer after that was a floppy kind of thing full of soft switches that came free with a few tiny screws more. At that point Deb came back up the ladder and realized I had fallen into an old mechanic's meme. The thing was already broken. The worst that could happen would be that, in a couple of hours it would still be broken. If so, the cost in boat bucks would be about the same. She joined in and off we went ever deeper into the electronic rabbit hole. 

Like all modern gee-wiz gizmos the inside of the C80 was a maze of ribbon connections and fragile circuit boards. Gentle prodding and a light touch are required. Eventually we found our way to the suspect ribbon connection, pressed on it a little, felt it move and then felt it stop. We are talking a few hair's width of movement. There was no way to know if that was the cure short of—gently—putting all the bits back where we had found them.  Carefully reassembled and hooked back up to power, with a press of the power button the screen lit up like nothing was ever amiss.

It might be a temporary repair. It might get us all the way to St. Louis. But it will get us on our way. There are no safety issues involved. There are two iPads, two phones, and a smaller chart plotter at the lower helm as back ups. So it isn't like we are going to get lost or run aground if it fails again. The only unique features of the C80 is that it is also the RADAR / AIS screen and a rudder position indicator. I loves me some RADAR and will not be happy if we are left without it. But we sailed thousands of miles on Kintala sans such luxury. If necessary we can do so again. The rudder position indicator is nice since I'm still making friends with the hydraulic steering. But it isn't necessary. The AIS, to me anyway, would be sorely missed offshore but is less of an issue on inland waters.

With the C80 functioning, Deb tackled some kind of computer / iPad / hot spot magic to get the two engine room and one aft deck cameras we have added to First Light to connect via a hot spot from one of our phones to an iPad once we travel clear of the marina's network. (And no, I'm not exactly sure what that last sentence actually means.) This was all Deb's doing as I often get lost just trying to find the “settings” screen on a phone or iPad. Sometimes, even when I do find it, I'm not sure what to do with it.

Looking through our sun shade in the cockpit

Our forward engine compartment camera

That little exercise turned into a multi-hour wrestling match, me trying to help where I could without making things worse for Deb. Unlike me, it is a very rare day to hear exasperation in her voice. Today was a rare day. She mumbled computer-ish words I couldn't follow while having various electronic voices tell her things she didn't want to hear. She got the things working but there is still some question as to the reliability of the whole set up. It was well into the early evening hours before we were cleaning up and getting ready for dinner. 

We worked pretty hard on a day when there wasn't much to do.