R and J in the USA

June 10, 2024

It’s nice to run into people who are trustworthy, knowledgeable, competent, and honest. Claude at Prudent Mariners in Portsmouth, Virginia, was one such person.

About two weeks before we would be living in our van for ten months, an issue crept up with the battery system that powers the outlets, lights, refrigerator, fans, heater, and other such things in the living area of the van. Pretty important stuff. Several shops took a crack at resolving the issue before Claude diagnosed and fixed the problem. As grateful as we were that he resolved the issue, we were more grateful for the persistence and commitment he displayed in figuring it out.

Our only planned transaction with Claude was to have him drop in a new battery. Upon hearing the symptoms the van was displaying, however, he suspected the fix might be more elusive than that and committed himself to figuring it out.

He devoted much time to the issue he could have billed us for, but didn’t. He could have quit any time on the basis that he completed the commissioned job of installing a new battery, but didn’t. He wanted to help us. He wanted to figure out the problem to satisfy his own curiosity. And he wanted to learn, because he hadn’t previously encountered the symptoms our system was experiencing. Even though he was busy with other jobs, and even though his business was geared toward boats and not vans, he stuck with it for a week until he figured it out.

This above and beyond aspect is what impressed us. A working power system is so basic to our daily van life that we took it for granted before the issue arose, and we take it for granted now that it has been resolved. But we don’t take the Claudes of this world for granted.

Note
For those of you interested in electrical systems, the problem turned out to be that, even though our two lithium-ion batteries were connected by battery cables, power did not flow between them because a terminal post fuse was missing. As a result, the system was only drawing power from one of the batteries, which ultimately killed that battery. The issue was so basic that no one thought to check for it right away, and it took a knowledgeable person, like Claude, to eventually discover it.