Day 219

We got up this morning and went over to the liquor store/cafe to eat breakfast.  After that we stopped by Thorny's to by licenses.  When we got to Dan's place he was working on the boat.  The engine cover was off - not a good sign.

It turns out that he wasn't getting power to the motor.  I asked if he'd check all the fuses and circuit breakers and he said he had.

So we started to try to debug things.  Eventually I went back to the trailer to get my meter.  The battery was dead in it, no surprise.  I put in a new battery and it still didn't work.  Neither resistance or DC voltage would work.  There's nothing to break in a meter - they should work for decades.  Unless they are Radio Shit I guess.

So on the way back I stopped at the hardware store to buy a meter.  The lady there gave me a discount.  Then  when I found out it needed a battery, she gave me a pack of 8 for free.  Nice lady.

When I got back we did some more debugging.  I finally thought I had it down to the ignition switch.  That's when Dan mentioned that the motor tilt should work without it.  The tilt wasn't working.  I started tracing the wires for that and found a fuse box on the motor that Dan hadn't checked.  One of the fuses in it was blown.  Replacing the fuse fixed most things.  The stereo and fish finder still didn't work.  We took the boat out anyway.  After two hours of working on it we weren't going to spend any more time.

The weather was great and we had a fine time fishing.  My new pole is wonderful.  It was easy to cast and I caught 6 or 8 fish with it.  We had a lady with us that lived on the river before they dammed it.  She was telling us about stuff that used to be there.

On the way out we saw a calf that was stuck down by the water.  I got off and tried to help it, but it moved away.  All I managed to do was tear up my new boat shoes.  On the way back we saw that the calf was till stuck.  Patsy got off (against everyone's advice) and tried to help it.  She made it worse.  We called the owner and asked if he wanted to rescue it.  He said yes and met us at the dock.  We all got out and Dan took him down river.

When Dan got back we found out that they had moved the calf to a safe spot and reunited it with its mother.  I got to use my boat shoes.  Dan can't wade out into the water to winch in the boat, so I did.