Some people never grow up. Take me for instance.
Saturday we went into Silver Spring and visited with some friends, got home around 2000. The next morning we got ready for church and walked out to the car. I climbed in and was surprised to find that I had to adjust the mirror on my side because it was facing down towards the rear tire. That's weird. Maybe some klutz bumped into it. Had to manually force it back into position. Then I looked over at the passenger side and saw that the glass was missing from that mirror. On closer inspection I saw that someone had tried to rip both mirrors off the car, trying so hard that they scraped them against the windows and left scratch marks. I looked around at the other cars and found that no one else had any damage. Man, I musta really pissed somebody off. I just couldn't think of anything I mighta done that would deserve this kind of action. I mean, this is high school retribution kinda stuff.
I reported it to the marina office and they said there had been a drunk that was picked up Saturday night and escorted off marina property. They didn't give me a name but maybe this was the dude who went nuts on my car. Still, I couldn't figure why anyone would do such a thing.
I shoulda realized. I grew up in Cockeysville, Maryland. Back in the days before it was overrun by big-city commuters Cockeysville was a nice little farming community in upper Baltimore County. It was also the home to a group of rednecks who called themselves the Cockeysville Wrecking Crew. Cute huh? These guys figured they lived in a small town and could get away with pretty much anything. They were known for street racing and fights but they were also good at intimidating younger kids and ramming people's cars with their pickup trucks. Rednecks. Just another part of "The Great American Experience".
Last week I was coming home from work around 1900 and stopped off at the post office to pick up our mail. I was driving back to the marina, going about 35mph (5mph over the limit), when this car comes flying up behind me and practically drives up my tailpipe. This dude was really close, so close I couldn't see his headlights. I really hate it when people try to intimidate me with their driving and I could feel my blood pressure going up. I pulled off to the side of the road to let him go by and he just stops and waits to see what I'm gonna do. He finally goes around and I pull out behind him. I'm perhaps a little overenthusiastic and, uhm, smoked the tires coming out. He floors it and, like the idiot that I am, I floor it too. Going across the bridge out of town we're going 60mph and the dude is way out in front. He flies past the entrance to the marina and just before he goes around the next turn I slowed down and turned in. I laughed the whole way to the parking lot. I figured we both acted like idiots, had some fun playing race cars and nobody got hurt. Pretty dumb but that's what us rednecks do, we play stupid.
Apparently that redneck plays by different rules.
Being all growed up now I had forgotten what it was like to live in a small country town. Deale is even smaller than Cockeysville was and I'm pretty sure the redneck coefficient is inversely proportional to the size of the town.
I figure I musta embarrassed this poor guy the week before. He probably got around that corner and realized how stupid he looked by running away from one of those moronic boat people. He saw me turn into the marina so he knew where I hide out. That weekend he was probably sitting in the bar down the road, drinking his fourteenth Bud Lite and decided it was time to set things right. Imagine his delight when he found my car parked among the boats out there. He flew into a skunked-beer rage and thought those mirrors were my ears and he was gonna tear them off. I'll bet it really pissed him off when he couldn't get em to come loose. Built Ford tough!
I don't know why I let myself get in these situations. If Cheri knew about this I'd be sleeping in the dinghy tonight.
In my other life, where I play an adult, things are progressing nicely. I came up with a design for mounting the Raymarine display at the helm. I drew it up and talked to the folks at Atlantic Spars about modifying the grab bar on the steering pedestal and adding a bracket. I actually tried taking the pedestal apart and wasted several hours on that before I realized I only had to remove the compass from the top. That gave me a huge hole to work through and I had access to all the wiring and gauges.
When we bought the boat it had gauges for wind speed and direction, boat speed and depth. These are Raymarine ST-60 gauges and they're about 11 years old now and showing their age. I sent out the boat speed display to be rebuilt because the face was fried from the sun and you could barely read it. The bezels for all three are looking kinda fried too so I also ordered new bezels. The gauges will work with the new Multi Function Display (MFD) and they'll all tie into it by one cable, providing both power and data. The circuit breaker and wiring for these gauges is sized right for the MFD so I'll just move it over to that and then it'll supply power to the three gauges over the single data cable. Perfect! There's a data cable and separate power for the radar that'll have to be run also.
I was looking into an autopilot for the boat but the price of a new system is kinda prohibitive for right now. But then I ran across an ad for a used system that had everything except the linear drive. I think I mentioned this the last time around. Anyway, I just closed the deal on that so we'll have autopilot for when we do the DelMarVa run in May. This will also tie into the MFD and provide compass and heading information. It will need it's own power and circuit breaker though so I'll hafta run a line for that also. Next month we should be able to get the linear drive and I'll need to have a bracket made to mount that near the rudder shaft under the cockpit.
OK, so now I've got plenty of projects to keep me busy over the Winter. We have four months to prepare for our trip. That's 15 weekends from now. I'll need at least 2 weekends just to pull wire. Probably 2 more to mount the radar on the mast. Figure another 2 or 3 to get the autopilot mounted. Then at least 2 more weekends to get everything working together and tested out. I usually take twice as long as I plan to get anything accomplished so I need to double all that. Let's see, 2 + 2 + 2 (or 3) + 2.....that comes out to 8 or so. Then double that and I get.....16 weekends. Guess I'd better stop playing games with the local boys and get to work.
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