Smelled acrid smoke when I got up this morning, soon as I climbed from the aft cabin to the helm. Uh oh.
If there's anything worse than a house fire, it's gotta be a boat fire. Especially in the middle of the night.
So this is what I found; notice the black smudge of smoke on the windscreen (click on any image to enlarge):
Well, this weekend's temperatures had hovered around 90, so before clambering off to sleep, I left the 12-volt helm fans running to keep air circulating ... and sometime during the night, the 2-speed control box on the left fan caught fire:
Unfortunately a smoke detector wouldn't have done much good, since the helm's got a canvas top ... and all the windows were open and unzipped anyway.
Both fans were installed by a previous owner, so I've got no idea how old they are. But I think it's a good time to replace them both. And find out how they were wired (and fused too, hopefully).
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Other news: Saturday I finally finished wiring Calypso's windlass (a windlass is a heavy-duty motor for raising and lowering the anchor). You can see the completed installation of the windlass switches, controls, solenoid and circuit-breakers on the lower right:
Here's a close-up:
There's two footswitches that still need to be installed on the foredeck; the remote footswitches are a "back-up" in case the anchor fouls on the bottom, or otherwise needs hands-on operator assistance from a human being to get the rode (the anchor's rope & chain) un-stuck, un-knotted or un-kinked.
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I've mentioned before that I can see Fort McHenry ("The Star Spangled Banner") from my slip. Here's a photo I took this morning, looking aft starboard from the helm. That's the Stars and Stripes at the center of the frame:
ps. Nut sure why, but somebody's been firing cannons all weekend; they've been going off so far this morning, too. The concussion (there went another one) literally rattling Calypso's cabinets, latches and plexiglass ports.
But it's funny ... like all-night fog horns, thundering diesel tugboats and battleship whistles, after a while you kinda get used to it and tend not to notice.
