Arthroscopic Surgery on Ho-Beaux

It has been really cold and icy in Seattle the last couple days, and our electric space heater isn't big enough to heat the boat. We have a thermometer in our bedroom, and this morning it was 45F. In the bedroom. And I'm supposed to motivate myself to get out of bed. Fortunately, being occasional outdoors-people, as well as current (M) or ex- (K) yuppies (can't be a yuppie if you're not employed, natch!), we have plenty of REI thermal under-gear within reaching distance of bed. I couldn't find my 42.7-46.5F cross-woven wick-tech polypro, so I settled on the less-optimum medium-grade polyester thermals and a button-up fleece.

Given this experience, I thought today would be a good day to fix our second heater, a propane stove thing installed shortly before we bought the boat. We had used it once, when I tested it after replacing the propane lines a couple years ago. It hasn't really been functional, though: the problem was that the DC electric fan that circulates the hot air never worked.

The culprit:

So, uber-motivated this morning, I traced the wires from the heater fan, into an adjacent cupboard, through a hole in the floor (pause to unlock the floorboards... hmm, this is strange, why is it heading away from our electric panel?), along the side of the water tank and... spliced into a coil of ancient-looking wire that ends in a wad of duct tape. This sort of thing is common on Ho-Beaux. We like to blame it on the previous owner. (Sorry, Chuck, but you were the only one we met.)

I clipped the wire where it spliced into the dead-end coil, and fed it up to our electric panel. If we are ever hanging out, and you happen to fall ill with cartilage damage in your joints, you are in luck! Because I am a master at arthroscopic surgery.

Here is what it looks like behind our electric panel:

One of the switches on this panel is labeled "Fan". This switch is the fifth one back in the set at the right of the picture. Not the set in the middle that you can almost see, but the set at right that is buried under the writhing mass.

The "Fan" switch actually did have wires attached to it already, however tracing these (with some difficulty) leads into the main electrical conduit, where most of the wires in the picture go. There it vanishes. Flipping the "Fan" switch has never done anything, so I think a safe assumption is that those wires are spliced into a coil of ancient wire, that ends in a wad of duct tape.

I appropriated the "Fan" switch to be the new home of our heater fan wires! Now the interesting part: to remove two small screws buried deep in the wire's nest; to insert each screw shank through a small circular metal ring attached to the end of each heater fan wire; to line this assembly up with the threaded hole; and to re-tighten the screw.

While doing this, there is a choice. You may have any two of the following four simultaneously: either (1) a pair of needle-nose pliers stuck into the nest, (2) a single finger stuck into the nest, (3) a screwdriver stuck into the nest, or (4) light to see by. Arthroscopy! And, as I say, I am by now a pro. (I should make $200K per year at this, really.)

So, now I am relaxing over a post-spaghetti glass of wine, and it is warmed to almost 60F in our salon. What was I saying about the romance of the sea?