We will be here for a little while as our electrical system gets brought back up fully functional. It looks like a new set of house batteries and a preventative replacement of the current limiter will have us up and running again. Like the starter battery, the house bank appears to be holding a charge right up until you put a load on it. Then the voltage drops like an anchor and everything goes dim. So it seems likely that leaving the boat in a yard that prohibited boats on the hard from being hooked up to power was a very expensive, and wrong, choice. It isn't a mistake I plan on repeating. In any case, it isn't likely the work will be finished today but we are making progress.
During the trouble shooting, I learned something new about the system. Two of the three volt meters we have on the boat were reading a full, no load charge of 14v, which agreed with the volt meter the mechanic was using to read the batteries directly. The third, which looks like the original analog meter in the electrical control panel, was reading 9v. At first I thought it was an ancient gauge that should probably be changed. But the mechanic spotted an open circuit breaker that I had missed yesterday when poking around myself. As soon a he closed it the 9v reading jumped right up to match the others. That seemed promising but, clearly, that volt meter is reading something other than the house bank voltage that both the solar controller and the inverter / charger controller are reading. But if I look at that meter and see it reading low, I'l know that breaker is open for some reason.
In the midst of this morning's goings on the marina folks asked if they could move our boat back closer to the boat behind us, making for a space big enough off our bow for another boat. The weather forecast suggests they are going to need all the room they can get for boats looking for a place to hide starting this afternoon. So, sure, no problem.
A little while later we saw another boat heading down the channel our way, the current running strong behind him. On the dock were marina personal ready to help him tie too. I'm not sure exactly what when wrong or who wasn't listening to who. But somehow the inbound boat got skewed stern close to the dock with the bow out in the current, a current that had him heading in our direction at a speed that all but ensured we were about to take a solid hit. The kind that causes major damage and ends trips. I called to Deb to hold on as she had moved out on the foredeck. She was calling the same thing to me.
Somehow, at the very last second, one of the guys on the dock got a hand on the starboard side stern line of the inbound crash boat and lashed it around a cleat with some magic flick of the wrist without even bending over. (I gotta learn how to do that some day!) The pressure on the line would surely have dragged our hero into the water. In fact I'm impressed that the cleat held. But it did. (Have I mentioned that this is a first class marina?) The line caught, stretched, and recoiled. The wayward boat's bow swung into the dock, so close to ours that our anchors banged together. But nothing got tangled up and no damage was done. Inches...we are talking inches, and the bow pulpit would have been ripped out of the foredeck, ending this trip right here.
But—no harm, no foul. I have certainly botched my share of approaches to a dock. As it turns out, the Captain on the wayward boat, who stopped by to apologize for the scare, doesn't have much experience with his new-to-him-trawler or with the kind of currents common to these parts.
So there I was, standing in the galley to pour a splash of rum. I looked up to see a sailboat gliding down the canal riding the ebb tide current. As I watched he tried to turn to starboard to turn his boat around, getting him broadside to the current. Deb and I jumped off our boat to see what we could do to help but he swept past our boat headed for the bridge less than 100 feet away. He got the boat moving forward and was then aimed to skewer the boat behind us, whose crew was sitting in their aft porch unaware they were about to be in an accident. At the last possible moment his tiny outboard managed to swing his bow up into the current, which had him aimed at First Light's hull. He came around just enough to brush by without actually leaving any marks but the current nearly had him stopped. By then the people on the boat in front of us had joined in the group of people trying to get this guy on the dock without damage. He started to aim is bow at the dock but Deb managed to talk him into keeping his bow into the current. Had he turned, he would have certainly crashed into the bow of the boat in front of us. He finally got abeam of the empty spot on the dock and tossed me a bow line. With that we got him forward and tied too.
I'm glad this day is over and I hope nobody else tries to get in here tonight. I'm not sure I would handle another close call with any kind of aplomb.
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