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Melissa & Dave - Adventures at Sea

Seen better days

Today we - Nearly go aground, realize the bilge pump isn’t working, struggle with a docking, and blow fuses.  Yeah, it’s a crazy day at sea.

At 4am Melissa hears Dave wake up and pull up some floor boards.  She knows he doesn’t do this unless he thinks the boat is sinking.  Weird.  But he doesn’t sound the alarm so she rolls over and goes back to sleep.  Next morning Dave explains that at 4am it had dawned on him why Melissa heard the shower sump pump running yesterday.  The main bilge overflows into the shower sump.  This is by design.  It gives the main bilge pump a natural back up.  If the bilge pump fails, then the water rises and overflows into the shower bilge where it then gets pumped out.  This then begs the question of where the water is coming from to begin with.  Answer is same place Dave thinks its been coming from for a while – the dang exhaust system anti-siphon valve sometimes burps in the engine compartment.  Though why its gotten worse is not clear.

Normally the engine compartment is kept separate from the bilges because they want to keep any oil that spills in the engine compartment from going overboard.  But since the engine compartment is clean, Dave installed a bilge pump to move the water in the engine compartment into the bilge so he doesn’t have to pump it out by hand every few days.  So the water was being pumped out of the engine compartment to the main bilge, and then overflowing into the shower bilge.  If this sounds like a Rube Goldberg drawing – that’s because it is!

Dave investigates further that morning to discover that its not the main bilge pump that has failed, it’s the float switch that turns on the pump when the water reaches a certain level.  We’ve replaced that switch twice before.  We have a spare aboard, but its not clear why they keep failing.  More to come on that.  Oh, and Dave still has to fix the engine compartment leak.

So we decide to move from Gig Harbor to Lake Bay Marina.  Its supposed to get HOT and Dave wants to be on the dock a few days to charge the batteries and run the air conditioning to make us comfy.  Lake Bay Marina – a very small and quaint looking place that advertises power and water on the dock.  We called for instructions on which side to rig with lines for docking.  They tell us port side and give Dave instructions on how to enter the marina given a somewhat tight entrance.

As Dave heads into the bay, we realize its shallow!  Dave saw 5 feet under the keel at one point and its not even low tide.  Gulp.  He slows down to a crawl and Melissa goes up forward on the bow to peer into the murky water hoping to see any rocks before we actually hit.  (Later we realized the instructions we got were a bit flawed.  At low tide we could see sand bars where we had been outside the deep channel.)  We made our way in – somewhat nerve wracking – and its tight behind the sand bar in the marina so there isn’t a lot of maneuvering room.  And then we realize they told us to rig the lines on the wrong side of the boat.  We debate whether to back into the slip or reverse the lines.  Dave decides to back in despite a fair bit of current.  And fortunately, some other boaters came out and grabbed our lines.  So in the end it wasn’t a difficult docking.  However, once we get tied down we look around only to discover there is no power.  The mechanical structures that would hold power plugs are in place, but the power outlets themselves have been removed.  Frustrated Dave decides maybe we should just go anchor.  We are better off with the breeze cooling us off than here at the dock with no wind and no power to run the air conditioning.  Melissa runs inside the little store and informs them that we plan to depart because we thought there was power but there isn’t.  Oh, wait, says the owner, I can run you power!  But turns out that now we have to change slips.  And another boat has to be shuffled.  So Dave helps the marina owner move the other boat out of the way, and then we cast off again.  Again Dave has to back up to the new dock in the wind and current.  Puts in square on the money again.

The owner then brings out an orange extension cord – the kind you would use at home.  Not a marine grade water proof plug type.  Dave rolls his eyes. He plugs in the cord to one of Apsaras’ AC outlets.  This promptly trips the breaker on shore side.  Dave gets off the boat, resets the breaker, plugs back in, and blows the breaker again.  He goes round this loop 4 times – each time turning off more and more circuits on Apsaras hoping not to blow the breaker.  Eventually he has everything on the AC panel turned off but the breaker still blows.  Ug.  Ok, its not a load thing.  Likely a GFI thing (Ground Fault Interrupt).  The breaker ashore doesn’t like something about the way Apsaras is consuming power.  So MacGyver thinks to himself – there’s another way to do this.  He gets out his batter charger and plugs it into the shore power extension cord. And then connects the batter charger to the house battery.  And voila!  The batteries power all the gear on Apsaras and the shore power recharges the battery faster than we are discharging it.

This works great for about 10 minutes until the batter charger overheats and dies.  Solution:

So by now you would think – why in the world would we stay?  Answer – because the restaurant serves up burgers.  With wine.  And even a gluten free bun for Melissa.  And the best home cut fries we’ve ever eaten.  And the burger was GOOD.  Not like Jim’s secret burger patty meat good.  But like solid A job on the greasy burger.  Like good enough that we will have burgers again tomorrow night.  And that was after the burger last night in Gig Harbor.

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