A Thousand Mysteries

Mystery Object #1 of an ongoing series
Whatever this is, we're probably very glad we own it.

Sometimes we happen upon a phrase that we think would make a good name for our next boat, should we decide to newgrade someday.  We've accumulated about 80 of these so far, more than we'll ever be able to use, of course. We are considering writing genre fiction, just to use up the extra names.  The one that is the the title of this post came to me the other day when one of our aforementioned malfunctioning pieces of equipment healed itself, as happens occasionally.  While economical, self-regenerating boat systems are annoying in that they confound even our tiniest hopes of diagnosing problems.  Our starboard outlet breaker has been one such mystery.  This one, however, was solved by Kevin of Martins Marine Service who was really here to refill the R-134a that leaks copiously from our refrigeration system, but took pity on us hapless Yankees.  In a real-life game of "Fortunately, Unfortunately" one solved mystery (a bad breaker, probably from overloading and resetting it too many times...our bad), lead to another when he tried to kill the power to the electrical panel.  Unplugging us from shore power plus flipping the main breaker plus switching off the power from the batteries to the inverter plus cutting the inverter breaker didn't work.  Nothing worked.  In other words, it seems there's no way to depower the inverter.  Lest you think that means I know what I'm talking about, all I know is that no one (including me, now) is going to stick his or her hand in our breaker panel to replace our bad breaker.  $o, another my$tery to $olve.  Not what we wanted to hear.

Speaking of things we don't want to hear, we're compiling another list.  This one we call, "Things You Never Want to Hear Said on a Boat."  Not just the boat you own, but any boat you're on.  The first two  belong to Skipper Dan on Delia out of Sturgeon Bay, WI, the last is from our own rapidly growing experience.

• "Hey, have you noticed that no one else is out here today?"
• "Not many captains would go out in weather like this."
• "I've been working on these for ____ years and I've never seen anything like this."

But perhaps the greatest mystery is how on earth (figuratively speaking) we've made it this far.