5/21

Cathy the AI suspects i am simply outa gas, despite assurances of the gage. She could be right, and it'll cost nothing to find that out, relative to mechanic consultation.

So i have a good plan: using the outboard, putt over to the nearby gas dock, fill up. Maybe miraculously it'll start?

But the outboard doesnt start.

I pull & pull on the cord till skin coming off finger. No joy.

Meanwhile all attempts to start the main engine has depleted the batteries. I need to recharge, so i go over to the thankfully next-door marine supply/repair store for a 20/30amp adapter.

The simple device [you could in fact accomplish precisely the same task with 3 pieces of 12ga copper wire and some tape, except it would be so mickey mouse, and illegal] is over US$100! But whadya gonna do?

So i take the precious gem over to the marina panel next to my boat, plug it in. Sparks fly!

Of course i jerk it out, try another outlet, and it works, thank god, no electrocution today.

I dutifully report to the Marina that 1 of the connections in their panel is bad.

The security guy arrives soon, removes my device from its good place. "Don't plug it into the bad 1," i warn, "it'll fry my extremely expensive adapter."

He nonchalantly plugs it into the dangerous connection. Now it works fine.

I pull the outboard start cord another hundred times.

Finally i don't know what else to do. I go over to the Moore's Marine office. The clerk is there at her desk. I say: "My boat won't start. What should i do?"

I expected her to take this as a request for marine repair services. Instead she looks back in silent shock.

"You do marine repair here, right?" i ask. The boatyard outside the door is full of big fishing boats propped on dry-land supports, busy workmen.

"Well yes & no," she answers.

Eventually she refers me to Ken, "the Boss". He's a very busy man, which i acknowledge, and he doesnt have time for my job. But he stops what he's doing, gives me the names of other mechanics who might do the work, and then patiently explains in detail what i mite do to fix it myself.

Everybody is so good to me.

And then there's the good woman in the marina office. She explains that if i'll be here more than 5 days, it's cheaper to pay for a whole month.

Sitting a whole month in this perpetual grey, cold, industrially miserable scene, with the world's longest trains going close by day & nite, the clanging of the crossing, waves of passing boats, and 1 of those supersized heavy-equipment jackhammers going all day long, every day, on a road project, despite its dingy charm, doesnt appeal to me. (Also i don't get her math. 6 days, paid by the day, will cost 160C$, but she wants to charge me >300$C for a month.)

I pull on the outboard cord a few more pointless times.

- -

The 1 thing i feared most for this trip was main engine failure. And now that it's happened, i seriously consider reconsidering. The 6hp outboard truly was unsatisfactory as a propulsion source... even when it was running; and now it's not.

It's a wilderness out there, tho' it's not like, if engine quit mid-nowhere, i'd end up lost/marooned. I have communications via SpotX, and to a lesser extent cell phone & marine radio. Someone would know of me, & find me.

But it's not like some boat just hooks up & tows you in. I mean: is that what happens on land, some stranger hooks up a rope & tows your broken car home? Marine towing is most especially fraught. Boating is hard anyway. Towing: there is tremendous strain on deck hardware. So there are Pros that do such, and charge a fortune. Like most things, it all comes down to $.

Can't even do the blog properly. Verizon works via local providers up here, but unlike home, i am limited to half a gigbit or gigbyte, whatever, a day, which sounds like a lot, but it just poof is gone everyday, even tho i compress photos, etc. And, unlike home, when it's used up, it almost just stops. I think there's so much going on in the background on phone+computer, it sucks up all the bandwidth and we dont even realize it's happening.

Cathy, always concerned with safety, asks if there's some flag i can post if i am in distress, and indeed there is...

When i was a child, i think French was the most-spoken language in the developed world, not english like now. So a lot of marine phrasing derived from French. The term "MayDay", which means emergency, actually is French "m'aide'": "Help Me." The flag above displays morse code, dot-dash, for the letter "A", again French for Aide. [So why not just show an 'A'; or 'H' for Help? I dont know.]

In Fiji, Peace Corps, during Orientation we all attended a water~survival course, because: Fiji being a bunch of islands, we'd each be traveling by boats of questionable quality. It was instructed by a serious Fijian guy who worked for resorts doing boating & dives with tourists. So he showed us the distress flag. Someone asked what the dot-dash meant. Pointing to each character, he said: "It means: I'm - Fucked."

How fucked am i, or will be?