Not so smart...

I know you're thinking, "Must be Jim."  Funny.  Real funny.

You may have heard me in the past, singing the praises of the Smart Plug.  It is the attachment on the boat where you connect your 30 amp electric cable.  Definitely an improvement from the old fashioned 3 prong twist connector.

Well, this morning, we were watching satellite TV, had the water heater on, and Joan plugged in her electric curlers.  A short time later, the power went out.  Not the click of a GFCI socket or the snap of a breaker popping.  First thing I did was check the GFCI - it wouldn't reset.  I went out to the electric pedestal on the dock... nothing popped there.  I tried plugging into a different pedestal... no juice to the boat.  Turning on the main breaker on the boat, we were getting power, but nothing was being distributed within the boat.  I was getting a "reversed polarity" light.  I checked the wiring at the electrical busses and didn't see anything out of place.  We determined it must be the GFCI socket; we drove up to the home supply place here and bought a new one.

Fixing anything like this is just like replacing the wall sockets in your house... except standing on your head.  Stuff like this in a boat is never in a convenient place.  It took some grunting and swearing, but I replaced the GFCI... still no power.  I decided I better get someone involved who knows more about this stuff than I do.  I called Friday Harbor Marine; the owner answered and said, "I'm at the marina - I'll be right over."

Unlike most service situations, he was actually here in a few minutes.  We talked about what I had done, and he asked, "Did you check your power cable?"

"No, I got a Smart Plug from you guys last year - I thought they were bullet-proof."

He put a meter on the Smart Plug end and wasn't getting continuity on the neutral.  He wiggled the probe around a bit... and got a decent reading.  "Nope, this looks OK."  I plugged the cord back in, and we had power!

"Bingo - it is something to do with the power cable!"  He opened up the Smart Plug and we were both surprised to see that it was fried.  It looked like it had arced from the neutral to the ground.  He said, "Well, I've never seen this before."

My first thought was: "This will be an easy resolution."  My second thought was, "These Smart Plugs aren't cheap, and they are supposed to be the ultimate plug-in solution."  He went back to the shop to get another Smart Plug.  While he was gone, I took apart the Smart connection at the boat to make sure the wiring there was OK... yep, all was fine.  The arcing was limited to the plug...

With a new plug installed, power was restored!

We were supposed to meet our friends George and Carolyn at 11:30 for lunch.  We had to push that back to 12:30 while waiting for Mike to come back from the shop with the plug.  It was 12:45 before we were done.  I apologized to George and Carolyn for the delay, but they understood our situation.

Lunch was good, with a nice view of the ferry docks and harbor, and fun conversation.  Joan and Carolyn did a little shopping while George and I trailed along and traded stories.

Back to the boat, we checked the power - all is good.

Little Izzy has comfortably settled in...

Those "tucked front legs" on that lower shot are a giveway that she is content.

Joan and I still have a bit more shuffling of stuff to finish our move-in.