The Best Laid Plans ... etc etc

After hitting the 9:15 this morning I spent the rest of the day at the marina with a multimeter and a headache.

Ok just kidding about the headache BUT I did find the short in The Kid's electrics. Turns out the insulating washer on the bolt acting as the alternator's positive (+) stud was cracked ... which let the bolt touch the bracket arm and short the battery's positive to the engine's ground (note: this is an unfused cable carrying 800+ cranking amps).

Gee.

I made a new washer with a pocket knife and she started right up around 6:20pm. For the next five minutes she ran strong enough tied alongside the dock to convince me to let her loose and go cruising toward the moonlight.

I was almost 15 feet away from clearing Dock 5 when the engine quit ... and The Kid started drifting.

Oh my.

Plowing along in a 35-foot houseboat at night with no steering and no running lights toward a multi-hundred thousand dollar collection of yachts that cost more to fill up with gas than The Kid is worth might cause some folks to panic, pass out or jump overboard and start swimming for Gibraltar. Not me.

I started laughing instead. I had to laugh because I've tried hair-pulling and rolling around on the deck crying and screaming often enough to know it doesn't work.

And laughing in the face of being beaten into bait-sized pieces by foaming boat owners overwrought at the possibility of seeing their expensive toys splintered by a bewildered guy with a beard shrugging stupidly from the helm of a floating Winnebago carries a certain panache, don't you think?

It took some doing but I finally got back to the dock under power. Barely.

The guy who owns the boat moored in front of me saw the whole thing and gave me a brand new alternator off his boat. And this is no joke: by the time he left a few minutes later I'm pretty sure he was thinking seriously about giving me his boat, too. Really. No kidding.

Ok, it needs two new engines, two new outdrives ... and besides re-plating the bottom it only needs another $15,000 or so in repairs to be worth $10,000.

But that's just what I need, another boat. With a third non-running vessel I'd have almost a hundred feet of boats with a combined value of about what a new washer and dryer costs ... which is what I'd wind up paying in slip fees every 3 months.

Still, I think I know a good deal when I see one.