I agree. I used to be a CPR/First Aid instructor. If it is free, do it! Russ, I liked that bear sign, very funny!

Today I finished the bottom. The boat is ready to move upriver but I am waiting until Monday or Tuesday. There are to many idiots out on the water that have no idea of right of way or courtesy. I was on the way out to the boat and had put my cell phone on the dash where it always is whenever I am running to or from the big boat. On the way out to the boat some idiot run so close with a big Sea Ray style of a boat about 38 feet long and swamped my dink. This is a dink that has crossed open oceans and withstood several hurricanes. This guy threw such a high wake that it covered the entire front end of the dink and flooded the inside to the point that I had to stop running and help the bilge pump bail the boat out. I have never seen such disreguard for laws, rules or courtesy. The wake was so high and fast that if I had not bailed the dink out that it very easily could have sunk. My cell phone was washed off the dash and went underwater in the bilge. It doesn't work any more. I am out of a phone until payday.

I'll be back shortly, Sherene is calling for me to run to the store...... RIGHT NOW!

We have those IDIOTS up here to Russ, It's scallop season.

Yeah, it should be open season on idiots. This is the sort of thing that makes me want licensing before you can run a boat. Nah, I don't want to get on that soapbox again. I'll just stay off the water on weekends and holidays. Maybe I'll be lucky enough to see him someplace when I am running Feather. My 40 tons throw a wake that would make a tsunami look limp. Maybe I'll get to repay the favor someday. Meantime, if anyone is thinking of calling me, don't! Sherene's phone is still working and I'll replace mine after the 1st of the month. Cameras and cell phones, what ever happened to good old house phones. I actually hate being where I am at the beck and call no matter where I am. I used to enjoy going fishing and not having a phone with me. Maybe I'll just start using the house phone and not go to the extra $30 a month for the cellphone. Nope, that won't work. Sherene will be going crazy if she can not reach me. And, what about all those phone advertisements and callers. They would all have to be laid off and their families would starve. It could start a chain reaction, the phone callers would stop buying food and shelter, the markets and housing sales would drop even more and more people would get laid off. Then they would quit buying food, housing and cars. Then the big three auto makers would have to lay off several thousand workers and so on. Nope, I can't do it. I have to replace the phone or cause another worldwide collapse of the financial structure of the world. Honest, I'll run out and get another cellphone on the 1st of August. Just hang in there everyone and the world will be allright.

Maybe I should consider trading Feather for something smaller. I'm sure someone will have something about 30 to 35 feet that would love a big live aboard. Stranger things have happened.

Russ, I have always been an advocate for boat drivers licenses.It may not stop them from being idiots, But they will have to prove they know the rules before they can drive it.
I would love to have Whitefeather but my 28 footer and trailer are not done yet. If I win the lottery tonight I will buy her.

Russ, you are not doing too good on the electronics and water. Did you get his boats name? You could report him, sue him, make sure he knows what he did, etc. I hate that too. How did the anchor turn out?

The boat was very unique. It had a black or very dark blue hull with lettering down the side. I will recognise it because I have seen it before. This time he cut behind two channel markers and across my bow. Where the two channels meet there is a center channel marker. It is confusing to boaters who do not know how to read markers. This guy did come from my right and under normal circumstances would have had the right of way had he remained in the channel. However, by cutting behind the markers he turned a stand-on right of way into a dangerous collision course channel crossing situation which gave the right of way to the vessel already within the marked channel. The more I talk to people about reading the markers the more I find that most of them have no clue as to what they mean or how a channel is marked. I even had one idiot tell me that he had the right of way because he had the bigger boat. I later saw him stuck on a sandbar because he didn't know which side of the marker the channel was on. He swore that the Coast Guard had marked the channel wrong to get more work for Sea Tow so the Coastguardsmen could get a kickback from the towing fees. With this guy he had cut so close in front of me that I had no time to get away from the wake. I was facing straight into it at very close range. The wake was very steep and my little boat dug into the first wake wave and went straight up. As it dropped into the side of the next wave it burried the bow into it and the wave ran right over my gear and everything sitting on the fishing deck. The water that hit me put 12 or 14 inches of water in the bottom of the boat. I was also loaded heavy because of all the tools and dive gear that I was hauling out to work with. I think that if I had not been loaded so heavy that the dink would have ridden over the second wave without digging the bow into it. I'll just keep an eye out for this guy and follow him into wherever he keeps the boat and see what he thinks about paying for the cellphone. I won't get anything but maybe I should file a report with the Coast Guard in case he does this to someone else. I suspect that he came up the ICW from someplace down near Sarasota. I have seen that boat before. Possibly when I was anchored at Sarasota. Like I said, it is a very unique paint job with lettering down the side. Besides, I don't think that suing every person who does something stupid is a good thing. First off, there aren't enough lawyers and secondly, I would probably be right at the top of the Stupid Things list!

Sherene just called me to check out something on her computer. When I walked by the dresser where I had left the cellphone I decided to try turning it on. It lit up so I plugged it into the charger. So far it looks like it may just work. We will see after it charges up. Just maybe I got lucky enough to get out of having to buy another one. Nothing else was permanantly damaged. Even the radio and depth finder are still working. The hand held GPS and the dash mounted GPS are both working. Salt water intrusion is always so much fun to deal with. Know what I mean?


Sherene thinks I should run down and bring Feather upriver today but I think waiting until after the weekend is over is the better choice. I don't work so I don't have to worry about getting the day off. Monday is the same as Saturday or Sunday except that most of the idiot weekender boaters are back at work and I have the entire river to myself. No jet skis or rogue boaters to deal with. No screwball go-fast boats towing psyco skiers without a safety watch looking out for other boats and swimmers.

Aaah to be out for a nice relaxing sail. No hurry, no noise and no cluttered channels. That's the life!!!!

I am still waiting to hear from the welding shop about the anchor. Hopefully it will be done soon and I can get it planted when the boat is up here in the marina, safe and sound. I want to do one more inspection dive to check all the thru-hulls and make sure the water intakes are cleared. I remember scraping them but don't think I probed up into the intake pickup. The water flow seems good but when she gets under a load and draws more water I don't want a restriction with the cooling water. Sometimes barnacle buildup will clog the large intakes. I just want to be sure and feel it is safe to run the engines as hard as I need to without overheating because of some little shellfish.

Jeff, don't tempt me. Sherene has been on my case to get away from all the work involved with caring for Feather. Work, money, more work and more work. She is on me because she says I am just getting to old for all the work required in keeping up with such a big boat. Say it ain't so! 2 days of scraping the bottom kind of got her point across. I am going to be sore for the next few days. When I mentioned what you said she jumped at me for not calling you right then. No fair in boat negotiations to get my wife on your side. When I let her help with buying the house up in Panama City I ended up spending $2,500 more than the asking price. That's a long story but it's true! That woman just doesn't believe in negotiating in my favor.

I just talked to Dell and Trudy on the cell so I guess it is going to live. I tried it out several times and even transfered some photos out of it to the computer. It seems to have come back to life.

Rain, rain and more rain. It is supposed to rain all day tomorrow and into Tuesday. I have to run out to the boat tomorrow because the cloudy days may have left the batteries low so I should run the generator to be sure the batteries are up and the bilge pumps have plenty of power. I may jump in and clear the sea water intakes and just run the engines a while to keep things limbered up and ready to run.

I opened the storage compartment on the dink a while ago. I didn't think anything about it the other day when the wake rolled over the front of the dink because the storeage compartment is water tight. NOT!!!! All my paperwork off the big boat was in that compartment. I had forgotten that I brought it ashore to update and renew stickers and registrations and such. All the new paperwork was wet. I brought it in the house and laid it out on the spare bedroom bed and all over the house with fans and blowers. Everything dried out okay and is now in a waterproof bag and going back out to the boat tomorrow. It's a good thing I remembered to get the papers before they disolved or got moldy. They weren't completely soaked but a few more days in this Florida heat and humidity they would have started growing mold and that would have been the end of a lot of important paperwork. Oh well, we all have our problems don't we. I thought about the papers because I wanted to be sure they were going to be in the big boat when I moved it in case I was stopped.

Oh well, I'll go out and run the genset for a while and drop a fishing line over the side and relax for a couple of house and watch it rain. Sounds like a plan.

Yesterday was a disaster! From getting cut on barnacles trying to clean the last of the bottom and intakes to the port engine computer frying and nearly setting the battery cables on fire. Needless to say it was not a fun day. I don't have time to get into it all right now but it started with my getting under the boat to scrape the last of the bottom and clean the water intakes. A big idiot yacht went by close and the boat dropped off the wake and hit me pretty good. It cut my knee and I started bleeding in the water. Thinking about the bull sharks caught this week I decided to get out of the water and get the engines going.

I started the generator and let the batteries charge a while and went back to start them. The port engine didn't want to turn over fast enough to start so I decided to jump it off the starboard battery bank. I run the jumper cables and tried again. The cables heated up real fast. I thought I had possibly hooked them up wrong but they were right where they belonged the same way I had done it before. I tried again but the cables started smoking so I disconnected them and started looking for what could be pulling such a high amount of power. First thought is the starter. It was warm but when I leaned on the power control panel it was very hot. I pulled the cover and found that the computer or selector, whatever you want to call it, was melted. I looked in my parts locker and found a spare so I pulled the old one out and installed the new one. When I turned the power on the gauges indicated a short. The fuel gauge and the tach both pegged out rather than indicate power to the panel. I disconnected the power from the engine electrical system and decided to call it a day. I have never seen one of these units melt like this. I went online this morning in search of another one and found that they have been discontinued. They cost about $485 when you can get one but I had best find out why this one fried before puting a new unit in the boat. If something else is the power draw and I add a new $500 part to the system it could also fry.

This was the old part.

I found this one in my parts locker. The numbers match so I installed it. It did not work!

How many people carry a $500 part as a spare? I have found everything from new bearings, rings, rod bearings, transmission bearings and 5 spare shafts. This boat has a lot of spare parts.

I am sorely tempted to change the engine over to the old standard ignition. Simple points, condenser and coil. It is much easier to troubleshoot and repair. With this electronic system I have no idea of where to start looking. I do believe, however, that I will start at the starter and check what the amperage draw is before I ruin the new part. I have looked online and they are no longer produced. I guess that's the way they are going to make us buy newer boats or repower the old ones.

This is where I found the replacement part.

I believe the best thing I can do for the next day or two is to stay away from the boat. When things go this wrong I usually wait for the karma to change and maybe get a bit better. I'll run out tomorrow and check the starter draw and head back in. Not a work day but just to see where the big power draw is if I can. I left my toolboxes out there anyhow and need a few tools to do a few jobs around here. Let me AND the boat cool off. It looks like I may have to drop the bent anchor when I pick it up and leave the boat set until I work out this engine problem. I don't want to run upriver on one engine. The entrance to the marina is very narrow and opens into a close chanel with lots of boats very close to the manouvering area. Like I said before, I'd hate to scratch one of those Yuppy Yachts!


Hummmm? I wonder if the sun is over the yardarm yet? If not, I'll move the Yardarm!!! I need a toddy!

Russ, I have swapped out distributos in cars from electronic to old points type. But this is a boat and you cant have spark advance like in a car. At least not as much. It could work, but it might ping and knock. But if it does, all you do is hook up a 12 volt wire, and you will need a 12 to 6 volt resistor . Or you could use a Chevy type HEI distributor, that doesnt need a box. There are a ton of them out there. I didnt know those used an ECUto control the distributor. If I can help, let me know.

Russ, I looked and the ignition control unit is way expensive. Just swap out an HEI or points type distributor. Iam sure Don's Marine up in Clearwater has some.

Ahoy Steve,

The old style distributer with the points and condenser would work. The timing is controled by the vaccum off of the carburators. The plate that the points ride on is timed by turning the entire plate. It worked for fifty or sixty years long before the systems that are in use today and were much easier to work on and service. Being old does have some advantages. I worked on those systems 20 or more years before electronic ignition systems were used. I could carry a spare set of points and condenser in the toolbox and fix the entire engine's electrical problems in a few seconds. I never was a fan of the modern electronics. A lightning strike within a few hundred feet will knock them out. The old way was suseptable to moisture but was easy to remedy. Just spray a little starting fluid on the wires/allow it to dry good and start. I had a 6 cylinder Chevy engine in an old workboat that had rusted so bad that you could not even pull the plugs but it ran for two years by just changing the points and condenser once in a while.

I have to check the other engine also. I thought it was the solinoid sticking when I tried to start it the other day but it could also be the same problem. If there was a lightening strike close by that would explain the electrical problems throughout the boat. The radar also would not start up and I later thought about the lights in the storage compartment that were not working. I'm going to have to check everything out very closely tomorrow. Sherene has a doctors appointment in a couple of hours and I have to get going. If the boat did get a close strike it would be better to convert the entire electrical system on both engines rather than spend over $1,200 to replace the existing system. I could change both engines over for about $400 or less. The radar may be fried if it took the strike. I had both radio and GPS antennas down and the mast was knocked off in the storm last week. That would make the radar dome the highest point of the boat. Even a near hit in the water could do this type of damage and more.

Gotta run, Sherene is proding me to get dressed and get moving.

Doctor........ Done!
Took Sherene out for lunch. Tuna Sashimi, Lobster Bisque and a Margarita. She's Happy!
Picked up welded anchor..... $20.00

Kicking back until suppertime.

Yeah, I know marine type points and HEI distributors will work, I was talking about 10 dollar You-Pull-It auto junk yards. Off a car or truck, I think the timing curve would not be right. They would work, but not right. My boat was hit by lightning too over a year ago, and some stuff did get messed up. Solar diode/controllers, Radar plug, Depth finder plug, and some of the wiring from the solar panels down had holes blown out but all still work. I always unhook my electronics if any lightning is approaching and when I am docked. We are having to get our TV fixed Lightning struck near here last weekend. TV is under warranty. It also got it a little over a year ago. Same exact thing. Good thing we went for the warranty.

We have to run up to the airbase this morning to update Sherene's military I.D. It is expired and needs to be renewed because it is critical with all her health problems and such. We forgot to check the experation date and just noticed yesterday that it had expired.

I may have to get someone to help with towing the boat up river if I can not get this electrical problem solved and get the engines running soon. With hurricane season upon us I would feel safer to have it in a protected anchorage or in the marina rather than sitting out on the hook again if we get hit with a tropical system or hurricane. If I have to I will try to haul it up with the dink but the dink is so light that a good breeze or strong current will cause problems. Here we go again! Just when things are looking like they are going our way something pops up out of the blue and I have another hill to climb. Sooner or later I have to reach the top, Right? NEVER GIVE UP!!!!

Time to head up to the airbase.

Got the I.D. thing done but they wouldn't let me change who I was. Oh well, I'll just have to deal with being me for a little longer.

We are having a few people over for a cookout this evening. 1bootyseeker and Mindy, our friends Tom & Amanda from up the street, Donna from next door, Vince from the other side and Mary from the corner house. With us that is about 9 of us. Sherene had me clean the carpet, scrub the kitchen floor, clean the carport, go shopping twice and she scrubbed the bathroom floor and headed next door with Atty so she wouldn't be in my way. Sherene is feeling better now that the leg has been repaired and the pain level is going down more every day. She is up and around and even walks outside without her crutches once in a while and just told me to pack her wheelchair in the shed so it is out of the way for the cookout. I think she is getting better since the leg was redone and some of the screws were removed. She seems to be getting in better spirits every day since the surgery. Maybe one of those doctor types has figured out what was hurting her so much when she tried to stand and fixed it right this time.

Oh well, I might as well get things organized and start getting things ready for the cookout. Donna is bringing a cucumber dish that she makes, Mary is fixing some potato salad, 1bootyseeker & Mindy have already dropped off all sorts of goodies, Tom & Amanda are bringing something that I can't remember and Vince has said he would bring something. I like these little "bring-a-dish" get togethers. It lets neighbors meet other neighbors and get a taste of other dishes from all over the country and around the world. Lots of good food!

This all started about three hours ago. spur-of-the-moment is an understatement. I like doing things like this without planning. Things go so much better when nothing is planned. It also costs very little when neighbors and friends chip in and bring a dish and some munchies or drinks. People will be dropping in about an hour from now so I had better get things going. Dishes, glasses, get the ice out of the freezer and start cutting up some cheese and munchies. YYYYUUUUUMMMMMMM!!!!

I have to head out to Feather this morning to see what can possibly be done to restore engine use and get the electrical system working properly. I am also taking the repaired anchor and I am going to set it out until I can get the boat back in condition to move up river. Right now the weather is quiet but since we are in the Florida Hurricane Season I need to keep a close watch on the weather and be ready for anything. All anchors need to be down and I am also thinking of connecting to the mooring anchor that 1bootyseeker found on our anchor search dive. Anything that will keep the boat anchored in a storm is most welcome. I am also going to renew my search for the lost anchor. If I wait for a storm to start to develop it could be to late.

I sure don't want to end up like this guy!


Or this one!

Russ, did you take those pictures? I can help you get your motors running. And if a storm is threatening, I can tow you. I got all the batteries swapped out, generator going, oil cooler hose made, all is good. But it would be best if you have both engines runnable, of course!.

Ahoy Steve, I took the bottom picture but the top one was sent by a friend who lives across the bridge from Willoughby Spit near Ocean View, Virginia. That sailboat had been caught in a storm last year and was washed up on the beach. Not exactly the place you want your sailboat.

The bottom picture was a boat right near mine and it is still sitting on the bottom about a hundred yards from Feather. There are a couple more sailsubs around the harbor that have also not been raised yet.

As for the towing offer, I may just take that if I can not get Feather running. I don't like her sitting that far from here in a storm. Here we have a nice protected anchorage with 5 feet of water along a canal with very good holding. If it really gets rough I can keep an eye on it and run some extra lines ashore to a few big trees with anchors out the other way.

I was going to run out there this morning but Mindy, Mrs 1bootyseeker, needs a ride to the airport to fly back up to New York today and If anything goes wrong out on the boat or with the dink I wouldn't want her to miss her plane because of me being late. I'll run out there tomorrow and see what I can figure out and start getting things repaired. Meantime I'll drop the repaired anchor in the water and at least secure Feather a little better until I get something working or decide to tow her. I'll let you know. I'll keep an eye on the weather.

As for the local sunken boats, there are still 6 or 8 sitting on the bottom around the harbor. Maybe we should look into getting together with 1bootyseeker and see what we can make for raising them. I did that for several years working recovery for insurance companies and it paid quite well even 20 years ago. We'll talk it over. See Ya!