Day 338, Year 6: Pump In, Pump Out, Plug In
Date: Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Weather: Foggy Morning, Sunny Afternoon, Low 70’s
Location: Eel Pond, Woods Hole, Massachusetts
The alarm rang at 7 am but when we got up we found Windbird wrapped in such a thick blanket of fog that it was hard to see the boats around us. We went back to bed and tried again an hour later. No change. So we decided that we wouldn’t make our trip to Falmouth Harbor to pump out the holding tank and pump in water and fuel to fill those respective tanks. Mid-morning Heather called to see if we were still going to need someone on the dock to catch our lines when we returned from Falmouth. We explained that we wouldn’t need someone in the morning, but if we could take Sam and Jonah with us in the afternoon, we would go then. That was fine with Heather and it turned out to be a good choice as the afternoon was beautiful. I picked up Sam and Jonah a half an hour early so we could get out of Eel Pond at the 1 pm bridge opening. Both boys were excited about taking an unexpected trip on Windbird-much too excited to go down for naps. So Sam took his role as co-captain seriously and helped watch for other boats and today Jonah showed a much greater interest in helping to keep watch than he has on previous trips. At one point as we were nearing Falmouth Harbor, we were suddenly enveloped in fog. It didn’t last long, but it gave both boys an introduction to sailing in the fog and the necessity of sitting silently and watching even more closely. When we got to the fuel dock, I was surprised by the fact that no one could be onboard the boat except the person pumping the fuel. We’ve never experienced that before, but Sam, Jonah, and I happily took at walk. It was a great chance to help Sam orient himself. As soon as we walked from the waterfront to the road, he recognized familiar sights. Both boys went to sleep as soon as we left the harbor and had good, albeit shorter naps than normal. Heather arranged to be at the dock when we returned so she could catch lines. I brought the boat in and I’m afraid I didn’t do such a great job. But between Mark and Heather, they prevented Windbird from hitting the dock. Sam got up just in time to watch us come in to the dock and was pleasantly surprised to see mommy catching the lines. We then met Jed and all went to Captain Kidd’s for dinner. Jed had a 6 o’clock meeting and only had appetizers, but both boys were excited to see daddy as well. And it was fun to just walk up the dock to the restaurant. I heard Mark wondering out loud how much it would cost to stay at the dock until we leave Eel Pond in November. But the dock spaces are totally booked for winter storage and those boats will be coming in soon.
The reason we came into the dock was to plug into shore power to give our batteries a full charge. But boats being boats, that isn’t happening easily. When we came into port in South Carolina, we just plugged in and things were fine. But today we plugged in and nothing happened. There is electricity coming into the boat, but it is not charging the batteries. Why? I wish we knew. While I took Heather and the boys home, Mark stayed here and worked on the problem. But he is stumped. He has made so many changes in the past few weeks trying to deal with power issues but we are missing something somewhere. It is all way too complicated for my mind. I am trying to understand it all and help him troubleshoot, but right now he’s putting aside the diagram he has been working on and will start again in the morning. The bottom line is that we aren’t able to fully charge our batteries when not plugged into shore power no matter how long we run the engine and we aren’t able to charge them at all when plugged in. Hopefully tomorrow morning we’ll figure out the problem and by tomorrow night I will have learned enough to explain the whole situation.
