SCOTTY, I NEED MORE POWER! ! ! ! !

SHIP'S LOG:

I have more power now as the new inverter/charger has been install and it even works! It is a very impressive looking piece of high tech nautical electrical gear as it hums and blinks and turns 12volt DC into 120 volt AC. The old one weighed three times as much and got deep-sixed into the recycling bind at the yacht club. All in all, it was .75 of One Marine Unit well spent.

On to the windlass. It doesn't work, at least not electrically. In the manual mode it goes up and down just fine, but electrically, it is another story. (You can understand why I consider all aspects of electricity magical.) There is power to the switch, power from the switch to the solenoid at the power, power to the foot switch on deck that operated the windlass electrically, but when the switch is depressed nothing happens. Now it could be something as simple as a bad connection between the switch the windlass ( anyone who believes that, stand on your head) because it has been in place for a long time on the bow of the boat and has probably be subjected to the same ongoing , quality maintenance ( or I should say the lack thereof) as all of the other systems on the boat. Since it dose work manually and I can't readily get at the connections to the electrical motor in the windlass without removing it from the anchor-well ( a major removal), I am going to let it stay as is at least for a while as I have bigger electrical fish to fry . . . . the auto-pilot.

Now for some reason, the auto pilot has given up the ghost. There seem to be no juice getting to it. The lights don't blink, it doesn't hum, and it has been in the boat since the boat was built . . . . .31 years ago!!!! True, it did work on the way up from Bridgeport, but when working on the inverter/charger installation, I found by accident that it has taken a sabbatical. Nothing done in the installation project should have affected it, but then the electrics on the boat were done by Lucas Electric, which also handled the electrical systems of British cars and upon whom was bestowed the nickname "Lucas, Prince of Darkness." SO next week, I will take a day and trace the juice and see if it goes where it is supposed to go and hopefully correct the problem which, I pray, will simply be a blown fuse!!!! What are the chance of that?

MASTER"S PERSONAL LOG:

The next few days promise to be wonderful . . .weatherise. I will have the new(old) mainsail ready to go and go I will. It hasn't been much of a summer, so every day is precious. True even when I am working on the boat, doing maintenance of whatever, it is wonderful, but it is nice to be able to go. It is not the destination that is important, it is simply the going. The peacefulness of scudding along with no sound but the wind and the water is impossible to express to someone who has never experienced it. It is a quenching tonic for all that ails one and it is something of which i can not get enough. I am planning to do a lot of quaffing over the next few days! ! ! ! !