In the Lyme Light
- Lori S
- Jul 16, 2023
- 8 min read
OR "Things you never wanted to have to know but are glad you do."
In our last episode we had just said goodbye to our friends Jim-O and Kat and were anticipating Jim (Sprague) was on the road to recovery from his mysterious ankle ailment...but that'd be a little too neat, wouldn't it?
My friend Shari decided she could get away for a few days to hang out on the boat and I was happy to have some company because, while Jim was doing better he still didn't have a ton of stamina. Shari came up with full knowledge and appropriate expectations [see The Mission Trip and Wave Trios.] Accordingly, we had the pilot house torn all to pieces when she arrived as we were finally able to install the new VHF cable which would hopefully eliminate the constant alarms on our chart plotter and fix our poor radio performance. Shari wasn't aboard for 10 minutes before she was holding up one end of a fascia board while balancing at the top of the spiral staircase. At the time, we thought that went well. The alarms went away and nobody got injured. Satisfyingly, we even found a spot on the old VHF coaxial cable that had abraded through the vinyl coating, shorting the woven cable shielding to the boat hull, and explaining our poor radio performance these last 3 years.
For the next couple days Shari and I alternated birding and biking while Jim alternated working on a gnarly spreadsheet and MATLAB code with his intern and taking naps. We had a nice time catching up and just hanging out but I felt bad that we weren't getting to take Shari out on the water. The pilot house reassembly project was still in progress and Jim was too pooped and too sore to really be an effective deckhand so we stayed in the harbor.
Meanwhile, after 3 days of antibiotics, Jim's ankle wasn't dramatically better. While his ankle was somewhat less grossly swollen and only turned really purple when he stood up, he said that it still burned like the dickens. I suggested/insisted he contact his doctor for further advice. As a result, we abandoned Shari on the boat and headed the ER at OSF St. Francis Hospital in Escanaba where we were supposed to get labs and maybe IV antibiotics.
The folks in the ER were just as nice as the other folks we'd met on our earlier visit. They promptly got us in a room, took a history and had a look. While all this was going on I was sitting across the room staring at Jim's outstretched leg when it dawned on me that there was a faint red ring around the 'bruise' on his ankle. Something clicked in my brain when I remembered his days-long flu-like illness a week ago and I suggested they check him for Lyme disease as long as they were taking blood out anyhow. The nurse practitioner agreed. The lab tech showed up right away and handily found Jim's vein and went on her way promising us results in 30 minutes or so.
It took a bit longer than promised as the ER seemed to get a surge of activity about that time but eventually the nurse came back and told Jim his labs were about what she expected and it would take a couple days for the Lyme results to come back from an outside lab. They said, "Finish the antibiotics, they're just working slowly. We'll call you if you need to do anything different."
We were almost back to the boat when my phone rang. It was the ER. Jim left his antibiotics there. We circled back.
By the next day, Jim was about the same but further behind on work. I decided to clear out and take a drive with Shari in her shiny new Miata. The destination was Peninsula Point lighthouse, a mere 6.4 miles away as the crow flies but 37 miles by car since you have to drive around the top of Little Bay de Noc and all the way down the other side.
We parked at the end of the paved road, grabbed our binoculars, and set off on foot for a little birding fun on the last mile of the trip. We saw black-throated green warblers and tons of indigo buntings but the stars of the show were the red-headed woodpeckers. The lighthouse was great too. The Canadian wild fire smoke was taking a break and we could see beautiful blue waters all around. It wasn't a boat ride but it was a fun cruise anyhow.
On Shari's last day with us Jim was feeling a bit better. I suggested we get the pilot house back in order and take a cruise to see Peninsula Point from the water. Jim agreed and began screwing things back together. With Shari shoving panels this way and that, Jim inserted a couple extra screws in an unsuccessful attempt to remedy the sagging soffit that now interfered with the screen door.
I fired up the diesel...it had been way too long since we heard that happy rumble. The radio and chart plotter and other instruments started up nicely but curiously, the radar would not power up. Shari needed to head home in a couple hours so I decided troubleshooting the radar could wait since it was a clear, sunny day and we were unlikely to meet an unexpected freighter in Little Bay de Noc. Jerry Ness (son of the builder) happened by to chat and shoved us off, with one door and one radar unit out of commission. His help was appreciated as there was a good breeze pinning us to the wall, and my deckhand wasn't at his sharpest. We had 2-3 foot seas but it was warm and Shari looked like she was having a good time sitting in the bow periodically getting splashed by the spray. I'm glad we were able to finally get her on (but not quite in) the water. Docking went fine, and after stowing her Miata's top, Shari was off to load up on frozen pasties and cross the bridge.
This is when we learned the first of the "things you didn't want to have to know." Jim's phone rang with a downstate number...it was his doctor from U of M. "Your Lyme titer came back positive." Stunned silence on Jim's part...followed by what may have been bad words. Lyme disease was not on our list of fun summer activities. We figure he must've picked it up while lumberjacking in our yard downstate. The fever started a couple days after that. It's kind of weird he wouldn't notice a tick stuck to his ankle but I read that many are in the tiny nymph stage at this time of year, so easily overlooked. While receiving a Lyme disease diagnosis is a real kick in the gut, catching it early means much better odds of successful treatment (4 weeks of antibiotic) so I guess we're glad to have that knowledge now.
Editorial comment: While there is a lot to dislike about electronic medical charts, such as how your physician spends the whole appointment typing, it sure did make the care seamless between U of M and the UP hospital. (We'll see how the billing goes...)
Friday. With Jim guzzling new antibiotics and plodding through work commitments, I took the first swing at radar diagnostics. I managed to yank the old 40# cathode ray tube display unit out of the dash without wrecking the laminate trim. On the back, I found an unused coiled serial port communication cable that was never going to communicate with anything and crossed that one off the list as a probable cause. I found a skinny gray cable that I traced back to the ship mains power and verified a solid 13.7 DC volts with our meter, crossed that one off the list too. Last was a big white cable that snaked its way back to the mast and the rotating antennae array, possible suspect. I found two old glass tube style fuses in the back of the radar display, both blown... highly suspect. After a lot of digging, I found a spare 6.3 amp down in the engine room, but I had to bike to nearly every auto parts store in town before I finally found a 5 amp at Koba's Electric. I replaced them both, switched on the power and...nothing. Both fuses had blown again. Enough for one day.
We had an interesting dinner at the historic House of Ludington. This white elephant had been looking pretty shoddy the last few years, but it has new local ownership that has reopened the kitchen and is making progress on rehabbing the rooms. The Great Lakes Cruising Club is having their 2024 rendezvous in Esky, and we parlayed that into a tour/inspection of the House of Ludington renovations, hoping that some of the dinners/events can be held there.
Saturday. We couldn't put it off any longer, and Jim's energy level had improved to moderate, so we dove back in. Jim started poring over the wiring diagrams in the manual while I scoured the interwebs to find a 15 meter long replacement 14 conductor cable for a 35 year-old Raytheon model 41x. This cable was a leading candidate, though we couldn't for the life of us figure out why it would have failed just now. Jim cracked open the antennae module up on the mast, and we were amazed at the pristine condition of the interior. Clean as a whistle, beautifully laid out and manufactured. Everything looked perfect, and did not seem likely to be the source of the problem. I disconnected the big cable down at the display unit end, and with his wiring diagrams handy, Jim started checking the cable leads. He soon found that several of the ships mains DC wires had continuity with ground, meaning a bunch of leads within the cable were shorted together. There was the problem somewhere in the fat cable, but why?
This is where we figured out the second "thing you didn't want to have to know but are glad you do."
We had lunch, puzzling over why the radar cable should have spontaneously failed at the same time we were putting the pilot house back together when Jim's face dropped and he said "I put a drywall screw into the cable." We ripped down all the soffit and fascia we had put up with Shari, and sure enough, there was a nice hole drilled into a really expensive cable. Jim had missed the wooden block he was aiming for by 1/4" and neatly sunk a razor edged hardened steel screw right in and then spun it a few times to do a good job of stripping off interior insulation and thoroughly blending the shield mesh strands with all the conductor wires inside. Yay! Successful diagnosis! Now all it needs is time and effort to see if we can coax our hopelessly out-of-date radar into another decade or two of service.
Armed with the helpful knowledge that Lyme-addled Jim had figuratively shot himself in his infected foot, I went back to my computer and located the last remaining 15 meter Raytheon 41xx radar cable on Earth ("NEW in box!") It was in Copenhagen. I ordered the cable ($341.88 including shipping from Denmark) and a lifetime supply, I hope, of 5A and 6.3A slow-blow fuses (20 each for $11.64.) Hopefully all will arrive by the end of the month.
We rearranged some cables and supports and managed to get the soffit and facia parts to fit well enough together to make our door work until we have to tear it all out again to replace the radar cable. It's seeming like it's time to pack up and go back home for some R and R.
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