Taking off on a new trip East!

Today I took off on a new trip, with an intended destination of St. Petersburg. It’s about 275 nm from Destin, of which I’ve already crossed 55 nm or so traveling at lovely speeds from 6-7 kts. This morning I had a spate of failures, part of the reason I would perform a trip like this anyway. First thing, the sun cover wouldn’t come loose from my depth finder as I prepared the boat. No worries, it was cold so I grabbed a hair dryer and heated it up.  Just a little bit of extra force to remove the cover and SNAP! The front bezel of the fishfinder broke where 3 of the 4 screws attached. The thing still works, but now the case is much less waterproof. I fixed things with a little bit of butyl tape, and I wonder how long it will last. I really like having a working depthfinder so perhaps I will replace it at my next haulout.

No worries there I think, so as I’m cruising across the bay I am switching the boat into cruising mode. I plug in my inverter and switch it on to be rewarded by sparks filling the device followed by a copious amount of smoke. I had just installed the thing in October in anticipation of my December Dry Tortugas trip, and it is so like cheap modern electronics to fail so quickly. As I sailed on I disassembled the device and noted that it had blown multiple fuses. I have the fuses, but it’s fine work to unsolder them and I just can’t do it with the boat jumping around. It will have to wait until I have some more time and the boat is still.

About this time I’m a bit annoyed, and it’s cold outside so I zip up my new jacket which Chiung had just bought me for 8$ the night before. It’s a fantastic jacket, but the zipper is missing a tooth up near my neck so as I zipped up the zipper head became free, and the thing unzipped myself to my belly button. My thoughts revealed my comedy at the situation.

I am feeling a bit ill and can’t type any more.  I’m going to go topside and ease my head.