A few weeks ago we were sitting on the aft deck on a Friday night, enjoying a lovely evening, and suddenly the power went out. We looked around and saw that it was just our boat. Kevin did some investigation and found the cord that brings power to the boat, called "shore power" was not right. It had melted the plug on to the socket attached to the boat. It was a bitch getting it off, but once it came, Kevin found it to be messy. One of the metal contacts on the socket was loose, and the plug was quite knackered. Is it our boat that has a problem, the cord, or maybe the pedestal on the dock where we plug in? We didn't know and there we were without power. Well, that's not quite true, see we have a fancy Kohler generator, we just fired that thing up and all was well. The generator runs the systems of the boat when you aren't plugged in, the refrigerator, water heater (which can also run off engine heat when underway), stove, microwave,...
Life aboard a boat in Chicago.