Generators go (and we hope come)
Morning came early and I was up at about 6:30am (Central Time) and walked out on the breakwater (already busy with local fishermen) and took a 3 or 4km down the beach – glorious.
About 11am, Louis-Jose arrived along with a couple of helpers to remove the generator from Turtlebones. The generator is like a small diesel engine that creates electricity which is used to power up the battery bank. One of the things you learn on a boat (other than when you are plugged into shore power) is that every watt you generate (from solar panels) is important to power fridges, freezers, instruments, lights and more. Sometimes you just can’t generate enough and coming up short does not work or your frozen food is doomed to thaw. The generator creates about 5000 kilowatt hours.
The generator on Turtlebones has not been reliable (understatement) and after trying other avenues Bill resorted to a new fellow to look at it. Bottom line is it seems “beyond repair”. So today the team arrived and 3 of then disconnected the fuel, electric and housing. We were all curious how they would lift it out of the hole it sits in since it weighs about 350 lbs.
We were a bit surprised when the process turned out to be brute force – loop a big line around the engine and slide a 2×4 through it – then get 5 guys to lift it out.
They managed to get it over the port (right) side of the boat onto the dock. They were supposed to get back to Bill and Sharon today with the quotes on a replacement, but maybe tomorrow. We are still hoping to get it delivered by Thursday and installed on Friday. If this slides, we may find our departure delayed until Tuesday.
We also worked at getting the new Iridium satellite link installed and were partially successful, but had to download a few 100MB of software up in the hotel. We will try and finish that tomorrow as well.
Leslie, Bill’s sister finally managed to sort out a flight home to Toronto tomorrow night after her flight on the weekend was cancelled due to the snowstorm in Toronto.
Hard to believe I have only been here 30 hours! Fingers crossed that we get the generator.
What an adventure, Lee is green with envy.
I think Bill must have won the lottery! Great choice to buy a decent generator. We must have had that thing apart 20 times….but when it worked it was awesome – but so loud we had to close the doors and yell at each other to be heard!
I cringed when I saw those bare feet…me thinks some hollering might take place should the generator be accidentally dropped on someone’s foot…OUCH! Best the vessel be in tip top shape before heading out on your journey. Bonne change…
Fingers crossed for your “next” generator to arrive and be installed by Friday!