IT"S ELECTRIFYING - POST # 54 (27 OCT)

7:PM pssssfft !  electric goes out, 50 degrees, raining, dark, we are cold wet, and now very miserable.

No VOM to check anything, and a totally unknown (new-to-me) electrical system, we have not run/looked at the generator yet, so we bundle up, eat a sandwich, go onto the DC system for reefer and lights, (no heat) and to bed. The next morning, it is cold, damp, and no ability to heat or make coffee...off to Reedsport for mcDonalds, and back to the boat at daylight... checked everything over and over but cannot explain the "118" voltage at the panel, but the inability to "load" even a lightbulb !... I go to the harbor office and tell them to send an electrician down.

pouring down non-stop, I am soaked, the electrician checks out the dockbox and it has 118 volts, he notices the scorched hot prong on the dock cable, and we assume "that" is the problem. But, no one in Reedsport has a dock cable ! so, off the 40 miles to Florence.... no one there has a dock power cable ! we suffer through another miserable night of rain, moisture, and condensation.

Frozen, I go to the local store for morning coffee... it is see-the-bottom-of-the-cup coffee, off to Chareleston Harbor and Englunds Marine for a cable (50 miles), we return with the dock cable plug it in ....same thing !
now armed with my VOM I determine the dock has dropped the neutral, or, that it is loose and not able to sustain load... knowing the electrician thinks I am incompetent, I hook my new and old cables together, and hookup to another dock box...same thing !  now I unplug my neighbors boat, and hook in there /////everything works perfectly.  so, back to the electrician.... he opens up the boxes and they are fried inside.

Some two hours later all is well. not our problem at all, they lost the neutral, and killed this whole side of the dock. during this fiasco, I got the generator figured out and we returned to AC power normal, heat, and lights.  Back on shore power now, I restart the generator again, and it goes electrically dead (another days job sometime).

And of course the next day the sun comes out it goes to 70 degrees no rain... Bonnie met her first Sea gull today... Sea gulls "eat" dogs !!