Since arriving we have had a variety of issues to deal with.  Fortunately most have been resolved with little issue but the GENERATOR  continues to gives us problems.

GENERATOR:  It worked a dream until the last 3/4 days coming across the Atlantic.  It had begun to switch of showing a light that said it was the engine that was overheating.   John had tried mid crossing to check it out several times but still the message came up after about 5 minutes of running it.

There was the thought that perhaps some goose barnacles had grown in the intake/outlet grids under the hull.  Richard dived under and prodded the vents and surfaced saying that there didn’t appear to be any blockages in them.  Certainly all the poking in with wire had not improved the situation. Having checked the manual and eliminated all the obvious possibilities we agreed we needed some professional help.

John contacted the Fischer Panda dealer advertised in the marina.  First stumbling block – they only deal with the electrical side of things and from what he was saying the guy reckoned (without seeing it) that we didn’t have an electrical problem.  He referred us to Alwyn, who duly arrived and checked it out.  All seeems o.k. so it must be either faulty part or an electrical fault.  Can you get the other firm to do a check on the sensors and let me know what they come up with.  Should this be an issue  NO  is it  YES.  John is playing pioggy in the middle and getting nowhere.   Having attemtped to use it a couple of times whilst we have been at anchor the problem persists.  We are now back in marina and will attempt to get someone to come again.  Failing this we will head to Martinique and hope that someone over there knows a thing or two about FP Generators.  Meantime we use the engine and occasionally get a little help from the wind generator which is proving less than useful.

Alternator belt:   John had to change this when we were in Rodney Bay as the old one was slipping and therefore not charging the batteries when the engine was running.  As a result we were low on house battery power for a night.  Glad to report the man did a good job and we were fully charged by the time we got back to Rodney Bay.

MARTINQUE – Generator repair

Having made the effort to get to Marin in Martinique we were thwarted to find the repair man was not available for  day or two.  We tried 3 -4 times to make contact by phone all to no avail.  We tried a different company to get work done and they pointed us in the direction of the Fischer Panda specialist – you guessed it – the guy who was unavailable.   We gave up in the end and continued our trip running the engine when we were moving from a to b to keep the power up.

Long a short = back in Rodney Bay yet again arranged for the guy from Regis to come and check the sensors.  (That was 4 days ago)  he still hadn’t arrived yesterday so John decided to have another go at the guts of the thing.  He got into the thermo switch and disconnected and reconnected it.   So far so good it has run for 30 minutes without overheating.  This is as good as it gets at the mo but it is progress.  It will be put to the test en route and in Tobago Keys.

CHARTPLOTTER:  Having been told by a Raymarine specialist that the deck plotter was dead  – it has been reborn!  This is due to the helpful knowledge and skills of Martin who it turns out is whizz at these things.  He was bored and offered to take it away and look at it for us.  It has been returned up and operational after he discovered that the back light soldering was cracked.  He fixed it and it now works yipee  and lots of thanks to Martin from Ranja  (and to Miriam who had to be neglected while he played with it!) .

March 2010

John has been busy with a few jobs recently.

AUTOHELM:

Our auto pilot went on the blink after he had changed the compasses over.  There seemed to be no real explanation for this and so the issue had to be pondered for quite some time before tackling things again.

Tackling the issue involved getting out the soldering iron and doing some reconnecting of wires that looked a bit dubious.

Results were successful and we are pleased to report a fully functioning autohelm again.   I really missed it, particularly coming over from Guadelope.  It is so helpful when there are just the two of us onboard and it takes two to handle the sails etc.

TOILET:

Well the pump has squeaked all the way since Portugal and over the Atlantic and we knew at some point it would become an issue.  We were pleased to have purchased a new pump in Grenada as a just in case.  We also had the repair kit just in case the in case was also faulty.

So middle of the night John went to the loo and it happened.  The handle of the pump refused to work.  It was blocked solid.  Oh no!  Bucket and chuck it till daylight  ugh!

We had to close sea cocks and start the fixing process.   It was pretty gross but could have been much worse.   Really it was just a build up of uric acid and salt water that had to be removed.

Poor John he coped really well and managed to do the business and replace various seals.  Result is a fully functioning loo once more (phew that’s a relief) but for those of you who came to know and love the squeak – worry not – it’s still there with more depth and resonance than before!

April/Easter 2010

THE GENERATOR AGAIN

We have had a recurrence of the overheating issue since we left Antigua. No amount of fiddling with connections, checking the coolant level, ensuring the seawater flow was adequate solved it this time. Ken from Dancing Walrus gave us some scale remover to treat any build up in the heat exchanger but that didn’t make any difference. We tried to get another thermo switch in Guadeloupe but there isn’t an FP agent there. There is FRED Marine however. Fred was sympathetic but as the boat wasn’t close by there wasn’t much he could do to help. He did however have a box of different thermo switches gleaned from other engines. He gave me 3 to try to see if a change would help. John was quite cheered up by this as it was the most helpful any technician had been since we arrived in December. Another emptying of the lockers followed with a return to blue air and depondency. You  can’t fit a ring spanner/socket round the existing switch without removing the deisel injector! Who designs and installs such stupid arrangements! The effing designers and builders nof these m/cs should be forced to try and repair them in situ whilst being turned in a cement mixer under a a deluge of water. Maybe then we would get user friendly kit.

Next stop was Marin on Martinique and they have an FP agent whom we had tried to get hold of in january but he had been too busy.  Called on tuesday to arrange for a visit on the thursday- terrific. He didn’t come tied up with another job! Promised for Friday at 9am. (We were due to leave no later than noon) 10am before Eric arrived, not an FP expert but he had been briefed on what to do. 2 hours later after removing the manifold to discover there was no thermostat valve which had been assumed to be the problem we were almost back to square one. Except that Eric noticed that the earth terminal for the switch which then controlled the coolant pump was loose. Was this the problem now resolved? I was sure that in 30 mins we would know and then get on our way but I hadn’t reckoned with the french lunchtime. Eric announced he would be back in 1.5 hours with a colleague to finish off. He did as he had promised, the generator ran for more tham the usual 5 mins so we paid the bill and set off at 3pm.

The generator did run for over an hour the next day but then shut down. I suspect there was still air in the coolant system and that had triggered the switch off. Fingers crossed that the top up of coolant and oil is all thats needed.

FRESHWATER SYSTEM

We had what we thought was recurrence of the leaky pump problem we had in La Gomera. We hadn’t noticed that the pump was running on overtime when we motored down the coast of Guadeloupe. It is quiet and the wind and engine noise had masked it. It was only when I went to fill the kettle and there was no water that we discovered it. What made it worse was the watermaker was running. We were taking in seawater , making it into fresh and then pumping it via the bilge back to sea. We now have a hand pump which makes emptying the various compartments a lot easier but we were very puzzled as the pump seemed OK. It turned out it was a hose on the hotwater tank that had come off, so an easy repair this time. Most of the hoses are double clipped this one wasn’t but it is now! Filling the tank in Isle de Sainte was different- you tie up to a buoy and hall the hose out of the sea. You than call Jerome on Ch68 and he turns the water on!