Inverter install

[John V. G. Mayton]

Down to the boat Saturday morning.  I got a late start, mostly because I stayed up later that I should have.  I went to Jude’s third birthday party last night and drank a cup of coffee; Jude may soon become my grandson because it looks like... my daughter, Marina, is going to marry Jude’s dad, Josh.  At any rate the coffee kept me up, at least in part.  There was another contributing factor which was watching Sons of Anarchy on my computer until midnight. On the way to the boat I stopped at West Marine in New Bern to purchase a new inverter.  I had $70 worth of discount slips that I was able to parlay into significant saving on the new inverter bringing the cost down to $30.  The old one got wet when a leak developed where some wiring from the mizzen mast came through the deck.  The sealant around the hole where the wire passed below, right above the old inverter, had dried out and allowed the rain to drip down along the bulkhead, ruining the electronics inside the device.  The inverter takes the 12 volt battery power and converts it to 120 volt electrical power to run things like power tools, computers, and phone chargers when away from the dock.   Getting to the boat I checked the mooring lines for chafe, adjusted the aft spring line by taking out some slack, inspected the sail and hatch covers, and checked the bilges for water.  All was well, no chafe, canvas was okay, and the bilge was dry.  I got busy clearing the tool bags and boxes out of the closet space to get to the inverter but once I got everything out of the way I got side tracked by a nap.  An hour later, Tim, my friend and dock mate, knocked on the hull waking me up to say, “Hi”, and invite me to a gathering up in the captain’s lounge at 1800 hours.  The theme was “bacon” and we were to bring something that had bacon in it.  Well, now that nap time was over I got busy removing the old inverter, tracing the wiring, removing the wooden backing and other stuff that the previous owners had use to mount the inverter.  The new inverter is much larger and I had to figure out a new mounting system.  With a lot of measuring, and trying different positions I finally marked out where I plan to put the new unit.  However, by the time I got all that done it was time to figure out what I was going to do about the bacon gathering. I had nothing on the boat that had any bacon ingredients so I figured I’d run up to Piggly Wiggly and see if something jumped out at me.  Marina used to get this catalog that had all sorts of goofy things in it and one of them was chocolate covered bacon.  So I figured, why not do something like that?  I picked up a couple of boxes of precooked bacon, some chocolate chips and some hefty paper plates for under ten bucks.  Driving back to the marina, I pulled into the parking lot, grabbed my bag of goodies and proceeded to the lounge where the microwave was kept.  Taking a pair of kitchen shears I cut the bacon into bite sized pieces, arranged them on two of the paper plates and put them in the microwave.  Once they were heated up well enough, I pulled them out and sprinkled chocolate chips over the bacon and put them back in the oven until the chips were softened, but not totally melted.  It looked pretty cool and tasted great, so I covered them with another set of paper plates, marked the top plate with, “bacon and chocolate” and put them out on the table. Tim showed up with jalapeño stuffed shrimp wrapped in bacon and after he put his offering on the table we sat outside enjoying the sunset and talking while we waited for the rest of the crew to show up.  There was quite a variety of dishes brought to the gathering; however, my chocolate bacon was voted the winner.  Which I must admit made me pretty darn good. It was an exquisitely eclectic gathering of folks from all sorts of educational, occupational, financial and geographical backgrounds.  The laughter and good humor was most excellent as we ate and talked.  Pete started a game that had us falling out of our chairs as we tried to memorize and repeat correctly a series of ten ridiculous and somewhat ribald, when mispronounced, tongue twisters.  If laughter is the best medicine then we cleaned the pharmacy out tonight.  As the night grew late we said our goodbyes and headed back to our boats.  I had a wonderful time and I’m looking forward to more of them in the future.