Ho Hum

The final stop on Florida's Gulf coast was at Ho Hum RV park near Carabelle,Fl.

The motto of the park sums the location up well, “it's just another Ho Hum day in Paradise”. The park was small and had a fishing pier as well as access to a narrow shoreline where dogs were allowed to be off leash! Zin loved that!

There were a few waterfront full hook up sites that were unfortunately not available for the Smitanic stay. However the assigned pull thru site still had nice views of the water and sunsets.

Theresa did a few loads of laundry while Kevin continued work on taxes, just another Ho Hum day!

A longer term park resident stopped by while Kevin was doing his drone flyover. Peter introduced himself and began to discuss his hobby of sailing. Kevin and Theresa love sailing and were quite impressed with the 2 sailing vessels Peter was working on at his winter Ho Hum stay. One boat was a vintage wooden haul and mast which he took out for a brief afternoon cruise. Another boat was a 2-mask dual-bow Proa (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proa). Theresa and Kevin had never heard of this type of sail boat which also had an outrigger attached. It was currently in pieces as Peter was in the process of restoring it to a seaworthy status.

Only one night was planned at Ho Hum. Theresa and Kevin were relaxing watching some news when all of the sudden everything electric went dead! Kevin jumped up went outside to investigate. He first checked the breakers on the RV's inverter, he then checked the surge protector. The surge protector was indicating that one of the two lines on the 50 amp service was dead. Kevin elected to quickly solve the issue buy plugging the RV into the 30 amp service. No power. Kevin then began to look for a staff member to report the issue. It was 10 pm and the office was closed, a service shed was open with lights on but no one was inside. Kevin then stopped to visit with all others who were out and about at that time of day.

“Do you have power?” he asked. “Yup”. Kevin noticed that everyone around the Smitanic appeared to have power, he also noticed that none of them used surge protectors and had their shore power plugged directly into the power outlets. “Where are the circuit breakers” he inquired. The commotion generated others to try and help. One of those that arrived was the park maintenance person. He immediately went to the circuit breakers to see if the site's breaker had tripped. Nope. He immediately grabbed his tools and headed to the Smitanic's site. Once at the site he tore into the 50 amp receptacle to replace the fitting. Once replaced Kevin plugged the surge protector in and the lights and TV came on. The repair was completed. Kevin then entered the RV just as he head a click and all power was lost. He bolted from the RV to race after the maintenance person and explained what had happened.

Upon return to the scene the new outlet was tested for proper power levels. There was still no power on one of the two lines that supplied 50 amp service. Kevin then explained he had attempted to use the 30 amp service to solve the issue and found no power at the 30 amp service. The 30 amp was then tested and sure enough no Power. The maintenance person then tested 30 amp and 50 amp on another site. Same issues. The folks plugged into that service did not have a surge protector and did not know they were getting low voltage and limited service. The maintenance person then tested breakers to see that the power to the panel was missing one full line of power. They then walked around the park to eyeball the power lines from the transformer the the power panel to see at least one if not more broken power lines. Not sure how long the park was running on limited services. To solve the issue for the Smitanic it was decided to switch the lines at the power panel from the 50 amp the the 30 amp breaker. This would properly power the 30 amp service and by pass the 50 amp.

Once this was completed the Smitanic was connected, with surge protector, into the now active 30 amp service. Success. Since it was now after 11:30 pm 30 amp would be enough to run the evenings power needs. Ho Hum.

The next day would be the drive to the Smitanic repair destination about 30 miles from Kevin's mom and sister!