“Orlene, Orlene, Orlene, Orrrleeeeene, please don’t take my boat just ‘cuz you can.” Jolene popped into my head immediately when this storm was named, and I couldn’t stop humming it for a week as we watched the hurricane build up from a prediction of Category 1 storm all the way up to a 4 by the time it had just about reached us.
Both of the kids have impressed me with how quickly they’ve picked up chess.
I refuse to believe that it is that difficult to make a fan that will last more than a couple of years with minimal use. I think back to the box fans scattered around my grandpa’s farm, and I’m certain they ran continuously for decades. This boat has 12 of these Caframo fans on the boat. This is a top-of-the-line fan, and yet half of them don’t work. I pull them, check all the wiring (perfect voltage levels), check the switches (all making good contact), and then as far as I know there is nothing left to do. I assume the problem is somewhere in the circuit board. Junk. Seriously, if anyone wants to go into the marine fan business let me know (not really). It honestly can’t be this hard, can it?
Extra lines out, extra fenders out.
Saturday it looks like it’ll miss us, but like we’ll probably get a good bit of rain, and surely some big swells.
Sunday morning things looked a lot better for us. The marina was in full lockdown mode, moving boats and preparing everything as if we were going to get hit, but it was hard to see how we could get much more than a bit of rain and some waves out of this.
In the end there wasn’t the slightest hint of a hurricane. It didn’t rain, it was dead calm, and there was zero swell in the bay. Weird. Saturday night the police were driving the beaches and kicking everyone off, Sunday the marina was scrambling to evacuate A dock (first dock inside the breakwater in the pic above), and Monday morning we were all out on the docks wondering how it could have possibly been so calm.
Not that this isn’t exactly what you want to happen with a hurricane scare.
11 Comments on “Orlene”
Glad to hear you were not affected. Love the drone pix. They really showed how you were prepped and your position within the marina. We had a bad experience with an expensive drone some years ago. Poor customer service and it really soured us. I see these kind of pictures though and it really makes me itch to buy another.
The drone images are the best. This one is on the cheaper side, as we don’t do many videos, it works for us. And it is so compact! We can fit it in the same case as our DSLR camera. Maybe it will go on sale for Amazon Prime Days or Cyber Monday Deals? https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08JGYF5W1?tag=boatkid-20&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1
WHEW! Glad to hear it was much ado about nothing! Great pix!
The drone view of all those boats strung up at the docks-very cool!
We went thru 3 direct hits when we lived in Florida & the spider webs brought back memories…not all good either. 🙁
Don’t miss that & hope that’s it for hurricane season for you there.
I’ve been waiting for this post. Our first year cruising we arrived at Paradise and had our only, so far, hurricane. All boaters, along with all resort guests, were evacuated to the business center above the mall. It was a crowded, overnight stay without windows. We got some rain, but no horrific winds, either. Glad it was a non-event for you, as it was for us. Our hurricane took out Bara de Navidad and those mountains funnelled it away from us. It did teach me an important evacuation lesson: bring a good bottle of wine to help pass the time and snacks as well as the necessities
Hurricanes are funny. In the sense that you may, generally, know where they are heading but they can change. I have a home in St Augustine when Irma hit, out-of-the-blue. Thought it was heading into Tampa. Water in the house. I remember you had bought a trawler and left it tied to the dock at Commanche Island, and it was a close call for the floating docks and the piers didn’t go under water.
Same thing with Ian, same flooding.
You never do know. Glad all is well.
Typical failure mode on those fans is a poorly soldered wire connection on the cuircuit boards. Easy fix! Also the company seems to replace them pretty liberally if you give them a call. They had a bad batch around the time that your boat was built. If you toss them, at least keep the little decal that has the serial number.
In Oct 2002 we were well back at Paradise Marina with Silhouette, a 38′ cutter. A hurricane took a slightly more southerly track, but not direct hit to Banderas Bay. We were “evacuated ” to the mall main floor. When staff feared the ceiling windows might break and fall on us, we were moved to the basement garage. Could we be flooded in there? End result, no damage in Paradise but the water level rose to 6″ less than the dock pilings, saving boats from carnage. That was the storm that messed up San Blass the most, but Busareas had sand/water a meter high in the first block and a VW size boulder roll through the lobby of a PV hotel.
Glad you had flat water.
We had very mixed luck with Caframo fans on Siempre Sabado. Some worked continously and others would just stop for no apparent reason in the middle of the night. Sometimes, if you waited until morning, you could turn them off and then back on and they’d work, leading me to think “thermal cutout”. But they would do this even when the weather was cool. Caframo did replace them when I complained but the next batch were just the same. Glad that Orlene gave you a pass.
If you haven’t tossed those fans yet, they can probably be fixed quite easily.
Same thing happens with the bathrooms fans at my house, we have about 8 or 9 of them and some of them lasted less than 5 years from new.
I replaced the first couple at more than $150 each, they are hard to find as I believe they are discontinued, so I had a friend who’s an electronics tech check one of them out.
Turns out it was a small $2.00 component (like an electronic fuse) that failed open, probably in there as a safety if the unit draws too much current but he assured me the piece is not needed.
It’s usually located right where the wires come off the fan motor, I removed the bad component and wired the wires together and now I have a working fan.
Maybe there is a tech in PV who could look at one of them for you, or you could meter the resistance on the motor wiring to see if it’s open.
Good news that you dodged another Hurricane.
Did you watch Queens Gambit with the kids? I’ve noticed quite a few of my son’s friends and relatives now play chess after watching it.
David.
Who’s turn is it!
🙂
Having been hit by five major hurricanes here in Central Florida since ’04 (three direct hits in 04′ alone) and many close calls, I have learned four things: 1. Each hurricane has its own peculiar character (e.g.: wet, dry, straight-line winds, number of embedded tornados etc.); 2. It is a wonderment how much damage can be caused over so great an area in so short a time; 3. Somebody, somewhere else, is having beautiful weather because these storms literally ‘drain’ the surrounding areas where they do not hit of all energy/moisture; and, 4. Any hurricane which does not hit YOU in particular quickly becomes a non- event.