swift1
Cadet
- Joined
- Jul 15, 2009
- Messages
- 26
Several weeks ago the wife and I decided to navigate a section of the Rideau Canal system that we hadn't done before. We take a nice leisurely hour long ride to the first lock, dock up and kill the engine as we had to wait for the lock to lower and let the traffic coming from the other direction go through. Beautiful sunny day though; so we relaxed and chatted with other boaters who were waiting as well. The lock finally empties and it's time for our side to start entering. I flip on the blower switch so we can fire up the engine. No blower. The lockmaster yells down that it's our turn to enter so I wave another boat in as I try to get the blower going. Test battery power by flipping on bilge - it's fine. Quickly look under the dash hoping to see a loose wire - no luck. Run to the stern and yank off blower housing to inspect motor - looks ok. Now everyone is waiting as I'm the last boat to go in. Lockmaster yells down and asks me if I'm still going through. I tell him the blower won't come on and he says ok he'd wait a few more minutes. Wife is getting increasingly edgy - she can't stand any kind of mechanical breakdown in front of people - ran out of gas with her in the car years ago and still hear about it today! Anyhow, I go back to fiddling with things, flipping the blower switch up and down, but nothing works. People are staring at us from the lock, obviously getting pi@@ed off at the delay we're causing. Finally I call up and tell them to go ahead without us as I didn't want to take the chance of firing up without the blower. Just as the lock gate closes and they start to let the water in, I notice the row of rubber doohickeys underneath all of the dash switches. Sudden realization kicks in as I press down on the fuse reset button, flip on the switch and the blower motor fires up! Earlier, during the ride over I had noticed I left the blower on, so I turned the switch off without realizing it had already tripped due to overheating. Needless to say, we didn't wait for the lock to open up again as I tucked my tail in between my legs and headed back home. We ended up going through that section of the canal a couple of weeks later for further adventures, but that's another story.
". put a new fuse in and Pump worked just fine. All that time beating my brains out
