Power Struggles

It never rains but it pours, as the old saying goes, and we seem to be having at least our fair share of problems lately! Yesterday, whilst checking to see whether anyone had responded to a comment I left on someone else's blog, I discovered that a very unpleasant individual, whose abuse on Twitter is mentioned in my last post, had started stalking me around the Internet.

This person had been posting unpleasant responses to whatever I said and using any opportunity to malign me and several others of my acquaintance. Whilst I was engaged in contacting blog owners to request that they take a look and decide whether they wished to continue hosting such nasty comments, our main generator decided to break down.

Having ascertained that it would not be a simple matter to get it going again, Robbie started the small standby generator, hoping that the larger one had brought our service batteries up to a level at which the rather potent 'smart' batter charger would be able to continue filling them without demanding too much power.

Unfortunately, this turned out to be impossible and finding out involved the smaller generator, usually able to supply enough power for the fridge, small appliances and/or the saloon heater, breaking down as well! By this time, darkness had fallen and we decided to wait for daylight before seeing what could be done.

It is now mid-day, pouring with rain and the sea is throwing us about as though we were a toy duck in a bathtub occupied by two energetic children, making even standing up a chore. We have to smile at the discrepancy between how some people imagine 'living the dream' to be and what is happening right now!

A mini-inverter is supplying power to this little notebook computer from the 12 volt battery bank at the moment. The larger generator appears to have suffered the same fate as its predecessors and will have to go back to the store which has already replaced it three times. Robbie is fairly sure he can get the smaller generator running again and that will supply the 12 volt battery system, allowing me to continue using this mini-notebook computer but it doesn´t have enough 'pop' to run the main computer which I have been using to build a website for a client and update my own websites.

Unfortunately, until the sea calms down a little, fixing even the small generator is likely to be very difficult and, given that there is no emergency - we're at anchor - it is pointless attempting it under these conditions. A cold wind is howling here so the heater would have been nice, but Robbie filled a small stone bottle we keep for the purposes with boiling water and I have it on my lap with a blanket keeping the heat around me, so things could be far worse.

Once the weather improves a little we will have to take the larger generator ashore and make the trip across the island again. For now, we have enough 12 volt power to keep this little notebook going provided I don't overdo it.

Now the question is whether to attempt to do the Twitterhood Quiz today. With this notebook I could host the quiz and announce the winner but probably wouldn't be able to update the results straight away although I will be working on that possibility too once I have tweeted a link to this post so that the curiosity of anyone on Twitter who wants to know why I have gone so quiet may be satisfied...

Things could be far worse - oh that these were our only problems! Still, to go out the way I came in, riding on a cliché: it is said that what doesn't kill one makes one stronger!