October 2016 - Nehalem, Oregon
Returning to Nehalem
Bay State
Park
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| Dog heaven |
This is the third post that I’ve written about Nehalem Bay
Last year Kayeanne ’s
stay with the San Juan ladies at the beach house
on Nadonna Beach
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| Why we keep coming back. You can see the next storm coming in the background |
Without realizing it we have been spoiled. Many people told
us how exceptionally great the weather was in 2014 and 2015. Many sunny days
and light rains convinced us that global warming was a great thing for the Great
North Wet. Well, we paid our dues this year. Twenty-eight days of rain set an
all time record for precipitation for the north coast of Oregon . We also had wind as storm after
storm marched across the north Pacific and slammed directly into our stretch of
coast. We had several days of wind gusts over 40 mph, and a couple of days when
gusts exceeded 60 mph. Whenever the rain stopped long enough for the sun to come out we dropped everything and headed to the beach.
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| Stuck inside in the rain, again |
The weather was so bad that the rangers closed the campground
for three days and encouraged everyone who could to leave. One storm spawned a
waterspout that came onshore as a tornado. It tore through the adjacent town of
Manzanita , about
a mile from the park, damaging many buildings and sheering off the tops of
hundreds of trees. Fortunately, the scary prediction of 100 mph winds never materialized, but what we did get was bad enough.
We thought about leaving the park to move inland, but
decided to tough it out. We did move to another site that offered a little more
protection from the wind and had less risk of trees falling on us (we hoped).
When we settled into the new site and plugged into shore power we discovered a
problem: no power. The automatic transfer switch, ATS, had died. This device switches
AC power from either our onboard generator or the campground power grid into the coach.
Luckily the ATS still allowed generator power through, so we dry camped for
four days until the storms let up enough for us to move back to our usual site.
We finally got a break in the rain long enough that I could jury-rig around the
ATS to restore campground power which lets us operate just like a house, running
appliances, space heaters and lights without relying on the generator or the
batteries. Installing a new ATS was high on the repair list.
For the first time since we have lived in Ripley we had a rain
leak. Water leaks in RVs are about as serious a problem as you can have. It
doesn’t take much water to cause rot and mold, so when we discovered a large
wet spot on the bedroom carpet we went into stress mode. Not only was the
carpet wet but the water had migrated under the cabinets and into a large
storage compartment under the closet floor. Since Monaco installed the cabinets on
top of the carpet, water in the carpet quickly stains the bottom of the
cabinets. Water is a really major problem.
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| Drying the carpet and floor took days |
I borrowed a shop vac from the park and sucked up about two
quarts of water. I couldn’t figure out where the water was coming from, but found
it after removing all the stuff stored under the closet, the drawers next to
the bed and, finally, the carpeted panel that hides some of the slide mechanism.
Water was coming in under the lower edge of the slide, running down the wall under
the bed and onto the carpet. I tried a number of things to stop the flow, all
the while trying to figure out why it was leaking. Nothing worked. Finally I
had an flash of inspiration: Ripley has an air leveling system that let’s me to
tilt the coach in several directions. Pitching it down several degrees to the
left stopped the inflow. We had to adjust to life on an angle, sort of like
living on a boat in a strong side wind.
About this time Ed and Christine Woznicki arrived. Seeing
them pull in was like the cavalry sweeping over the hill to rescue the wagon
train in the old westerns. We were pretty stressed from dealing with weather, the
water leak and the ATS failure. Oh, yes, I forgot to mention that the dash
blower quit on the way from John Day and I
couldn’t see any way to replace it without cutting a large hole in the dash
board. We were really glad to
see them!
Interspersed with my camp host duties, Ed and I started
working on the leak and the dash blower. After much looking and poking and
talking about possible causes, we found a couple of potential sources of water
leaks and fixed them. The next rain storm proved that we hadn’t solved that
problem, so we tilted the coach again and moved on to the dash blower.
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| I can feel it.... |
This device is what circulates warm and cold air in the
cockpit to keep us comfortable as we drive, but its critical function is to
clear condensation from the inside of the windshield. We might get away without
it in Arizona , but not in Oregon . Getting that replaced was important.
When Monaco
built Ripley they apparently assembled the coach around the blower. There was
no thought given to providing any reasonable way to replace it. By removing a small
drawer in the center console I could see part of it and touch most of it with
one hand. Removing a small heat register in front of Kayeanne ’s
seat let me touch the rest of it, but the opening was too small to let me turn
my wrist over. The two openings were far enough apart that I couldn’t get both
hands on the blower at once.
To make it just truly good, there wasn’t enough clearance
behind the blower to remove it from its housing even if you could get the
screws out. Part of the dashboard structure where three panels joined was
directly behind the unit. I had spent a long time trying to come up with a
strategy that didn’t require literally taking a saw to the dashboard but
couldn’t. Ed initially agreed, but he just does not take “impossible” for an
answer. After thinking about it overnight, the following day he spent four hours working one handed to take out
five screws. Then, also one handed, he drilled holes through the backside of
the junction of the dash panels to break away enough material to squeeze the
blower out. I couldn’t believe he had done it. A good friend, indeed. I am
truly grateful.
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| Thank you, Milton! |
After seeing what Ed went through to remove the original Philips
screws I knew there was no way to use them to replace the unit. Switching to
hex head screws meant we could use wrenches and sockets instead of screwdrivers
and was the key to being able to do it. It still took Kayeanne
and me over seven hours to finally get it done. It really just took three
hours, but we had to do it twice because the electric connection wouldn’t seat
after the first attempt. We had to remove it, fix the connector and reinstall
it. No, it isn’t easier the second time. Kayeanne
was critical to getting it done because I couldn’t swing a wrench while reaching
through the vent hole. My hands and wrists just wouldn’t work in that small space.
I can’t imagine how Ed did.
With all the problems and the lousy weather we didn’t get to
do as much with Christine and Ed as we planned. I hope the next time we get
together we can focus on visiting, not fixing.
We found a shop in Eugene
to work on the leak. We headed directly there when we pulled out of Nehalem on
November 1.
More soon,
Bob
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