Little Surprises

Old boats aren’t like cars.  Over the 8 years that our model boat was in production, Pearson built less than 240 boats.  Toyota Camry, just in the US, sells 1100 cars a day.  Cars are built by a manufacturer and they build or have built for them nearly every part on the car.  Most new boats from large scale builders are now similar to cars in that respect; they are production built and are exactly the same as their sister boats.  The wires and hoses are all in exactly the same positions, the engines are the same, the interiors are the same; they are basically exact copies of each other.

Old boats were much more custom than most new boats.  While there are many similarities between sister boats, there can be, and often are, a lot of differences.  The Pearson 424 came in three different setups.  Ours has one mast and two sails, while others have one mast with three sails or two masts with three sails.  Respectively, those are called sloop rigged, cutter rigged and ketch rigged.  The interiors are all slightly different, as are the exteriors, but the hulls are all the same, so they are considered to be the same model.  From one boat to the next the manufacturer may have used different engines, different masts, different rigging, different hardware, etc. and because of that there isn’t a manual like there is with a car.  In addition, previous owners have made changes as better equipment options have become available or parts have worn out.  I would guess that by now you would be unable to find two Pearson 424’s that are exactly alike.

We do have an engine manual, but we don’t have anything that shows where the hoses run, where the wires run, how to turn things on or off and even what equipment is onboard.  That leads us to occasionally discovering new things about our home.

When the rigger finally finished re-installing the mast we noticed that our new deck lights didn’t work.  We had a label on our switch panel that said, “Deck Lights”, but when we flipped it nothing happened.  We had the electrician come back out to check the wiring and he found that we had power up to the base of the mast.  When he was going through the circuit, though, he asked if there was another switch for the deck lights.  I said, “Not that I am aware of.”  Then he asked how we activated the horn on the boat and I said, “We have a horn?”  Apparently, we have a horn on our mast that we have no idea how to use.  I’m still trying to figure that out.  The wiring did get straighten out and we now have working LED deck lights controlled by a single switch.

New LED deck lights light up our deck and the surrounding boats while drawing very little power.

We knew we had a hot water tank when we bought the boat.  On many boats the only function the tank serves is to hold water that has been heated up by the engine.  I assumed ours was like that until one day, after living on the boat for about four months, I noticed a switch on the panel labeled “Water Heater”.  I flipped the switch then later that day checked the tap water and sure enough, we had hot water.  We haven’t been taking showers on the boat; we use the marina bathrooms for that, but it would have been nice to have hot water over the winter.  Oh, well, we have it now.
 

AC switch panel with Water Heater clearly labeled.

We look forward to the time when we know all the systems on the boat and the location of every switch, valve, wire and hose.  I suspect it will be a while before we reach that point, so until then life aboard will be a series of little surprises.  Hopefully, more good surprises than bad.