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Showing posts from January, 2017

Not Again Again! This doesn't look good.

Woke up this morning to this. The inside should be bright orange, not charred. The new SmartPlugs are now DumbPlugs.  Here we are again without power mid-January.  The most interesting thing is that the plug in the middle wasn't actually plugged into power, we'd unplugged it a few weeks ago.  These inlets also have a thermostat that is supposed to shut the power down if there is too much resistance to avoid these problems.  We also were running a very light load last night, not pulling many amps since it has been unseasonably mild and we have heaters powered through other cords. We did have a thunderstorm last night, with some nearby lightning (super-rare for Chicago in January) but we see no signs of a lightning strike anywhere.  All the pedestals, where the power comes from, are fine and the cords are fine on the other ends.  The inlets are also covered from the rain, so it isn't a water issue.  We talked to SmartPlug this morning and they seem like they'll s

Baby, It's Cold Outside. Let's Move to Florida!

Nope, not moving to Florida. Chicago has hit us with some cold weather pretty early this year with December temperatures below zero Fahrenheit (-20C) and now January is doing the same thing.  Our first winter aboard Cygnet was 2014/15 and we had one of the toughest winters in Chicago history.  We survived on Cygnet and thought if we can tough it out through that one we'd be good.  Well here we are not halfway through 2016/17 and we are having to tough it out again.  When December's cold days hit we hadn't wrapped the boat yet and it was cold.  Now the boat is wrapped tightly and we are still cold.  One reason is because we are missing a window. Temporary window This past Spring we had our mechanic (well, our ex-mechanic as you'll learn) doing a bunch of work for us, number one being a six month! rebuild of our generator.  He assured us he could also fix a glass window on Cygnet that was missing and the previous owner had replaced with a plastic one.  So in late