The Life and Times of Captain D and his Pretty First Mate

Our LG dishwasher, a nice stainless model that is whisper quiet, decided to just not work when I had it all loaded up the other day. It has capacitive touch buttons on the control panel, and the entire assembly was dead. Did the usual and checked the breaker, pulled the schematic, and saw there was a power filter. There were multiple instructions on where "things" were located, so I pulled the dishwasher, disconnected the water and drain lines, flipped it on its side, and connected the power to check the three electronic boards.   The power filter was on the lower back of the dishwasher.  All checked out good with this board.  I truly did not need to flip the dishwasher, just pull it enough to get to the back. Next up was the actual "brains", and it checked out as powered up.  It's encapsulated in a gel, so no testing of any power output components without removing the gel. No chance of testing the dishwater interface, low voltage signaling, and encapsulated lik...

With the upcoming repairs and renovation, "G" Dock is all but vacant, with just a few transients tied up and soon to be gone.  Many of the boats slid back to "H" Dock, to the west/left as space permitted, with our SV-Time and Tide among them. It's a mixed bag on H from the looks of it. Much more active with many of the boats sporting old, retired guys "fixing" things and such. One such sailor had all his chain out and was marking it with a "better" color scheme. Personally, the older scheme seemed to be just fine to me, but everyone is the Captain of their own boat. The winds were a bit gusty, but this captain managed to "twirl" the boat between the docks and glide her into her new slip. The First Mate took over the helm as I left the cockpit to secure a few initial lines. Easy-peasy. I have got a few items to check off my preparations list, then the First Mate and I will cruise a bit on Charlotte Harbor, and anchor out as the winte...

This past spring the First Mate noticed a few specks of rusty metal on her freshly washed clothes coming out of the washer.  I was able to track down the source to a couple of places where the enameled top met the detergent dish.  A new top was a bit over a hundred dollars, so I put it on the list of things to do and promptly left for Tennessee. I ordered the new top when we returned to Burnt Store Marina this past fall and began to remove the old, rusty top.   Replacing the top was the simple part, it was all the wiring and hoses routed through the top that took all the time.  Fortunately, between me taking photos as I disassembled the washer, along with some basic Poka-Yoke (idiot-proofing), I was able to reassemble the washer. Finally!!!

When we first looked at our home in Florida, the realtor told us that the previous owner had a lot of work down on the roof, and the owner before that had the roof tiles "glazed" to keep their color.  When we migrated back from Tennessee, I noticed a small part of the ceiling in the garage had discolored and drip marks staining the interior walls.  I called the company that had done the previous work and he came out to take a look.  While he inspected the leak, he let me know what other work he had done, which was a kind of good news, bad news story.  The good news was he had re-done most every valley area on the roof at the request of the owner, the bad news was there were a few left he had not done, including the couple over the garage.  He sent out a crew a week or so later, and they were done in a few hours.  Nothing fancy, work a tile loose, and the rest can be easily taken out.  They scabbed the joist where the leak drizzled down in the attic, re...