Underway Day 87:

The past nine days were a combination of fun, happy times with good friends, peppered with periods of sweaty despair and utter frustration. After several very hot, humid, long days of trying to find the bad wiring, I went online and ordered all new cables and backbone connections for the network. I had them sent to the marina. The idea was that this would eliminate any wiring issue and narrow the focus. With everything done that could possibly be done, we decided to take a break and stay in a hotel. Mary and I were tired of the bugs. Our main concern had shifted from mosquitos to these spiders that are everywhere. The bites are horrible.

Gelbuda and Amber came in from Nashville for the night and we had a fun time and some nice meals with them. John Gifford, one of the engineers from Fame Studios joined us. At one point when we went back to the boat, all the systems briefly came up for a minute, which gave me some hope that it could be a failed cable, as I suspected.

After our friends left, I continued to work on the boat for long, hot, 12 hour days. I did discover a faulty Suzuki factory wiring harness plug, and was able to rebuild the plug harness using tiny screwdrivers, getting all the engine instruments working again. I also pulled out lots of old, unused wiring, labeled many wires, and did other projects like cleaning the bilges, repairing electrical connections, getting the windshield wipers working, sanitizing the water tanks, installing the new autopilot rudder indicator, and installing a new macerator pump on the holding tank.

Eric, the Bearded Jaguar Shark, returned for a quick visit. Rodney invited Mary, Eric, and I over to the Florence Area Music Enterprises (FAME) recording studio one evening for a songwriters showcase. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves listening to excellent original acoustic music, in an intimate setting, at the legendary studio. The afterparty at Wildwood Tavern was also fantastic, especially the good company and thin crust pizza. The food there is not only excellent and cheap, but they serve until 0200. I did lose in Skee Ball to Tim, a British transplant who had never played before, so that hurt a bit. Tim is an amazing aerospace engineer, who was high up at Boeing and in charge of aspects of the ISS. He is also a fellow music lover and I enjoyed our conversations.

When the packages arrived the next morning at the marina, I went straight to work. I connected everything up again in short order, and it all worked! I was extremely happy that all our problems had been resolved, and it only cost $400 in materials. I plugged it all together loose to see if it solved the problem, and it did! It then took an entire day just to pull it, snake it, organize, cable tie, and put the boat back together. Then I did a detailed cleaning and waxing of the boat, in the heat, for six hours. I’m pretty sure I sweated out several pounds just doing that.

Now that we were back in action with all systems go, we decided to celebrate by heading up to Nashville for the Pilgrimage Music Festival with Buda, Amber, Eric, and our new friend Tim Fagan. We bought tickets, sat down to enjoy Counting Crows, and 5 minutes later the festival was cancelled and it was pouring rain. This was a pretty big disappointment, but we made the best of it, and had a great weekend just relaxing, laughing, and telling stories with some of our best friends.

The weather forecast had steady rain and thunderstorms in our area for the next week, but we returned to the boat, did some reprogramming of our nav instruments, and waited for a break in the rain. Today we just did a short 40 mile run down the Tennessee River from Muscle Shoals to JP Coleman State Park. We watched the radar and left as soon as the rain passed. It was a quick shakedown cruise down the river. We arrived at the lodge and marina just before the rain started again. I love timing the weather like this!

During the cruise, I did some testing and calibrated all systems, including depth, autopilot, fuel gauges, trim, etc. It was lots of programming after doing some factory resets, but everything is now working better than ever. We are all systems go!

We had a nice relaxing night in a rented room at the State Park lodge. This state park is similar to Barkley Lodge or Joe Wheeler, but without the amenities. The room was clean. The river view was stunning. We had a covered slip. It was cheap. And best of all, we didn’t have to sleep in the rain, covered in spiders, only to wake up and break down a wet tent. Mary puts up with a lot. A nice bed and some AC make for happy wife/ happy life.