Day 21- By Vicki

I wasn't awake very long, when Tim from the Facebook Live Aboard group wrote me an urgent message about the electrical work our friend did yesterday. He wrote, "Stop Stop Stop, if he switched a 15amp breaker with a 25p breaker, this will overheat the wires and cause a boat fire. Undo this ASAP!!!! A 25amp breaker should have a 10ga wire, the 15amp breaker is most likely 14ga wire." Of course this freaked me out, and I was worrying like crazy.  Aaron called his friend who did the electrical work and told him I was afraid the boat would start on fire.  Our friend explained to me that what he did was safe and I didn't have to worry.  Even with everything running on the boat, it was running almost exactly at 15 amps.  I could see that on the panel.  The conversation made me feel better. I stalled for a while, but eventually put my trust in the boat.

Some time went by, and we were just about to get off the boat and go walking around the town, when the portable air unit started acting funny.  Aaron though I was imagining things, but went to inspect the gauges.  He noticed that the amps were randomly spiking.  He decided to unplug the portable air and said the cord was really hot.

Around this time, Aaron and I agreed that it's time to go home.  We can't use air conditioning on the boat, it's over 90 degrees every day, we having problem after problem with the boat, we are almost broke, and we are just tired.  We don't want to sleep another night on this hot boat and neither does the cat.  I'm not going down with the ship.

Aaron started walking to the hotel to find out about renting a car for the day, when I smelled smoke. I called Aaron, and made him come back to the boat.  I couldn't figure out where the smell was coming from, and asked him to help me explore.  We found that the orange extension cord burned through the new carpet and to the 2nd layer of old carpet as well.  He pulled up the floor board to assure me that the fire stopped there.  Nothing else was burning.  We unplugged the ship to shore power and found that the boat had fried that cord too.

There is obviously something wrong with the electric to the boat, and I don't think it has anything to do with our friend changing the circuit breaker yesterday. I think it's just coincidence.  Remember, amps were spiking over 50, breakers were breaking, and a power cord was fried all before he ever touched the electric. We thought the boat's ac was responsible for all the problems, but it's something else.  There must be something triggering all these issues.

We had another exciting car ride home with the cat, and we are sleeping in our own bed tonight.  The house is as perfect as we left it. No issues.

We've been testing the live aboard life on our 30 foot Searay to see if it's the life for us. After nearly sinking, overheating, sea tows, rocking, electric cord meltdowns, melting fires, air conditioner breaking and so on, we've determined at day 21 this is probably not going to be the life for us!   Maybe our next 30 days will be a tent by the sea with our portable air unit.

We are going home.  It's not over yet though.  We will try to get a good night's sleep, but tomorrow we start our journey with the boat to get her back home.
 

Exciting Car Ride With Cat

Melting Fire on Boat's Carpet

Low on Rum