Dear Mrs. Manners,

What do you do when your marina neighbors are endangering other users,
your guests, and the metal parts of your boat?

The nimrod on the face of our pier, absent for the past few days, has
compulsively screwed his shore power cord down to the dock with cable
clamps on about 9" spacing. That’s good, I guess. While admiring this
arrangement, I noticed that he had also put a screw in the cover of
the power stand so it couldn’t be opened. That made me wonder, when I
looked at the power cord coiled neatly in the driving rain with the
live end about six inches from the edge of the dock, whether he
unscrews it every time to throw the breaker.

Inquiring minds can’t leave well enough alone so I got a screwdriver
and removed the screw. All breakers were on. The paper labels that
tell you which breaker goes to which outlet are long gone at our
marina and I didn’t want to risk turning off someone’s boat so I just
disconnected the cord and hung it over the hook.

I can just see it. One of the (generally under the influence) sunset
watchers comes down and kicks the cord in. They reach in to retrieve
it and follow it in with the shock. Someone else rushes to their aid
and also goes in. Someone with more presence of mind goes to trip the
breaker and, where is a screwdriver when you really need it?

My ironclad rule is that the boat end of the cord is never live, even
for a moment, unless it is fixed in the socket and the breaker is
always off when the shore end is inserted or removed.

--

Roger Long

"Roger Long" wrote in news:C7yig.34252$8G3.21244
@twister.nyroc.rr.com:

My ironclad rule is that the boat end of the cord is never live, even
for a moment, unless it is fixed in the socket and the breaker is
always off when the shore end is inserted or removed.


Very correct. Never leave a live dead end on the dock. That's just
stupid.

Now, if we're interested in teaching this idiot a lesson, we go down to the
dock on TUESDAY, when noone is around and "accidentally" the open end falls
in the drink, buzzing and arcing away in the salt water for a few minutes
before we trip the breaker by hand if it doesn't by itself, leaving the
breaker tripped and the live end rotting away in the salt water.

I bet it would never happen again....(c;

How some of the really STUPID ones survive an offshore passage never ceases
to amaze me.....

Roger Long wrote:
Dear Mrs. Manners,

What do you do when your marina neighbors are endangering other users,
your guests, and the metal parts of your boat?

The nimrod on the face of our pier,

A nimrod is a famous or very able hunter.

Here, I see nothing wrong with you disconnecting the power cord and
putting it on his deck. I doubt that if the live end fell into the
ocean, it'd stay live long as the breaker would then trip making your
scenario of many dead unlikely. I will, however, concede that is is
possible. How about instead we have this killing a scuba guy cleaning a
bottom?

If we want to get unlikely, then we can also say the live end falls into
the water and so charges the marina that all the zincs fail and boats
sink all around from the induced electrolysis.

"Roger Long" wrote in message
...
Dear Mrs. Manners,

What do you do when your marina neighbors are endangering other users,
your guests, and the metal parts of your boat?

snip

Roger,
What about notifying the marina management? I'm surprised they just let
people screw stuff to the dock and drill holes in their equipment.
--Alan Gomes

Roger Long wrote:
Dear Mrs. Manners,

What do you do when your marina neighbors are endangering other users,
your guests, and the metal parts of your boat?

The nimrod on the face of our pier, absent for the past few days, has
compulsively screwed his shore power cord down to the dock with cable
clamps on about 9" spacing. That's good, I guess. While admiring this
arrangement, I noticed that he had also put a screw in the cover of
the power stand so it couldn't be opened. That made me wonder, when I
looked at the power cord coiled neatly in the driving rain with the
live end about six inches from the edge of the dock, whether he
unscrews it every time to throw the breaker.

Inquiring minds can't leave well enough alone so I got a screwdriver
and removed the screw. All breakers were on. The paper labels that
tell you which breaker goes to which outlet are long gone at our
marina and I didn't want to risk turning off someone's boat so I just
disconnected the cord and hung it over the hook.

I can just see it. One of the (generally under the influence) sunset
watchers comes down and kicks the cord in. They reach in to retrieve
it and follow it in with the shock.

The question I have WRT this is simple - don't you people use RCD's
(residual current devices) instead of straight breakers? If you did,
this scenario would be plain impossible. Any current over milliamps
leaking from active to earth would trip out the breaker.

All circuits in this sort of scenario should be done in this way.
Relying on people to do the right thing WRT power is a waste of time.

PDW

Relying on people to do the right thing WRT power is a waste of time.

Like relying on the marina to have it properly set up?

"Bill Kearney" wrote:

Relying on people to do the right thing WRT power is a waste of time.

Like relying on the marina to have it properly set up?

Well Roger did say they got their equipment at salvage.

Bill Kearney wrote:
Relying on people to do the right thing WRT power is a waste of time.

Like relying on the marina to have it properly set up?

Well, yeah, you should be able to rely on the marina to do what's
technologically possible and cheap to protect fools from themselves,
and others from fools. As I said, RCD's are cheap. There really isn't
any good excuse for not using them and it makes a live cable immersed
in sal****er impossible, barring some sort of wierd RCD failure. The
only time I've had one of these things go bad, it went open circuit so
no current flowed ie a fail-safe condition.

PDW

In article ,
"Roger Long" wrote:

What do you do when your marina neighbors are endangering other users,
your guests, and the metal parts of your boat?

I *like* our dock at Tolchester. We have an agreement that if something
is objectionable, it's perfectly okay to board another's boat and
correct it. We got stuck in the marina last weekend with 20+ sustained
and 35 knot gusts putting us on the lee shore and exactly one halyard
clanged -- sometimes.

What you did would have been perfectly acceptable in our world, except
that the owner would have liked a note stuffed through his companionway
explaining the situation.

'Course our dock may be a bit "different". Even with those gusts, most
on the dock went out and tried to sail -- for a half hour or so. Those
winds and waves were brutal.

Pat and I weren't in that crowd as we're cruisers: If it doesn't look
like fun, we're perfectly comfortable sitting still, wherever we are.
We've sailed worse, but neither of us suffer from testosterone poisoning.

--
Jere Lull
Xan-a-Deux ('73 Tanzer 28 #4 out of Tolchester, MD)
Xan's Pages: http://members.dca.net/jerelull/X-Main.html
Our BVI FAQs (290+ pics) http://homepage.mac.com/jerelull/BVI/