We learned something today. For two days, we have periodic tapping coming from somewhere in the boat. The tapping varied in intensity and volume. Sometimes it would go on for quite a while and then go away for hours. It sounded like it came from different areas, but that can be hard to tell on a boat because of how sound moves.

It was driving us crazy. The tapping didn’t seem to vary based on the movement of the boat. We tried turning various appliances on and off to see if it changed anything. Given how irregular it was, we went down a few false paths.

Then we saw it… more precisely, Wendy saw it.

We heard the tapping particularly loudly. It was dark, but standing on the deck looking down at the air conditioner cooling discharge, we could hear it and feel it. I crawled down into the engine room by the two air conditioners to get a closer look. Sure enough. It was thumping.

We turned off the air conditioners. It was still thumping. Not electrical. Water dripping maybe? Something loose?

Wendy went to look outside again and saw something. Something.

I turned on my phone’s flashlight to take a look.

Nothing.

I went and grabbed the hand held spot light.

I turned it on.

I pointed it at the water line by the boat.

There it was….

A carp!

After a bit of searching online, apparently this is a thing. The carp like to eat the algae off the bottom of boats. They are also apparently attracted to discharge (that explains it being near the AC discharge). There’s also some commentary that it might be the females rubbing their eggs off on the boat, but this one definitely looked like it was eating.

So now we know…