Gary’s dad, who was hard of hearing, would always complain that his wife could hear all sorts of noises that she would want him to investigate.  He always told Gary, “Your mother can hear the squirrels on the roof!”

Gary, as most men his age, are a little hard of hearing.  Certain tones, or noises he can’t hear.  My voice seems be just the right tone that guys can’t hear cause I make most of them say “what?” when ever I talk to them :).  Or I guess it could just be selective hearing, ya never know.

We have some noises on our boat as you would with any boat, pumps, condensers etc, etc. Some of them Gary can hear and some he can’t.  When our Raytheon depth sounder accidentally turned on and it starts making it high pitched squeal, which Gary can’t hear, I have to tell him “it is making the squealing noise again!” so he can shut it off.  Luckily we have installed a new depth sounder so I don’t have to listen that as we travel.

Then there is the chirping noise the fire/CO2 detection devices make when the battery is low.  These we installed from the factory on the boat and are hard wired in.  While we were on the hard before we left for this great adventure of ours, the devices kept chirping.  Chirp, Chirp, Chirp, Chirp!  Gary couldn’t hear a thing.  I kept telling him they are chirping again, “OK”, he says, “I’ll take care of it”.  After a few weeks of chirping the detection devices finally quit.  Thank God!  We figured they were broken and bought new ones.  Turns out the battery was too low on the boat so they were chirping because of the low battery.  Now that the battery  is fully charged, they work fine :).

So every now and again I hear the “Squirrels on the Roof” as I did the other night as we were getting ready for bed.  I was brushing my teeth and I could hear an almost honking noise that lasted a few seconds and then honked again about 15 seconds later.  As many boaters know, sound can travel thru your hull from the water so things may sound like they are coming from your boat when if fact they are coming from somewhere else. First thing I always do is check the engine room by putting my ear up to the engine room wall in our stateroom to see if I can hear it.  Which I could.

Engine Room Wall in our stateroom

So I called Gary over to listen too.  Low and behold he can hear it!  So we decide to check out the engine room to see what is making the noise.  Gary was first in line as we trooped up the stairs and headed to the back door to the engine room.  Well, it had been a really nice day that day and we had shut our air off and had the screens open, so when I went to bed that night I just closed and locked the sliding door.  So when Gary opened the back sliding door, he didn’t see the screen and walked right into it

Foot hole in screen

Darn it, his foot went right thru the screen.  Well, after a few choice words, we continued down into the engine room and sat there and listened.  Nope, no noise, it had stopped by the time we got down there.  Oh well, the boat is still floating so back to bed.    I guess it was just another “squirrel on the roof”!