Thursday 19 April: We awake early as the fridge technicians are on board at 8am. Immediately they pressure the system and the pressure drops. Our fridge leak has reappeared … again. But these guys have a gas detector, not soapy water like the technician in Saint Vincent. Very quickly our worst fear is confirmed. The detector rings its alarm inside the fridge box itself.
Unfortunately we have one of those fancy isotherm fridge boxes where the evaporator is sealed on the outside. Replacement is impossible without dismantling the whole galley joinery and workrooms. And for us that is out of the question, as it will never be the same again for certain, no matter how carefully it’s done.
But Patrice offers a solution: install a new evaporator inside the fridge box. It will reduce the fridge size by 1cm on 3 sides but the baskets will still move OK. Small price to pay for a positive solution.
They fill the fridge with R34a gas anyway, to see how long it will last. Fingers crossed we can get 2 weeks out of it while Teo, Geta and Darius are with us. So yes, bad news but at least we have a solution.
Patrice says he has seen many Isotherm fridges of this type with same issue and, as others have informed us before, our condensers (cooling coils wrapped around a through-hull valve) are prone to issues too and it would be best to change to the FrigoBoat keel-plate type when we are next out of the water (it would require holes drilled through the hull …. not a good idea to do that while Cloudy Bay is afloat!).
Glen had been thinking to do this anyway when we are in the USA, the next out of the water for antifouling. Hm, maybe we should get it done now? Investigation with the nearby yard puts that idea to bed immediately. They want 1200 euro to haul out and drop back in …. for just a day!
Lots of jobs to do now to get ready for our guests arrival tomorrow. The guest toilet is a manual Jabsco and has been squeezing recently, sign that it again needs pulling apart and a service. Yesterday we bought an electric adapter kit which is supposed to be a direct retrofit. Glen gets down to making the swap.
Yes, removing the old hand pump and replacing with the electric unit is indeed pretty easy, but of course there are other complications. Firstly, where to drill the hole to get the electric supply connected. And the only way to get a drill in there is to remove the whole toilet bowl!
After quite a bit of work, at last it’s connected, pinned-in and the toilet reinstalled. Time to test it. It sucks water out very well, but does not pull on flush water.
Time to get out the instructions! (Glen’s motto: “if all else fails: read the instructions”!!). And there in bold black on white: if you have a venting system in the feed pipe, it needs to be removed. Bugger! We do have a vent pipe. So out come all the panels in the adjacent wardrobe and said vent pipe removed.
Now, at last, water flushes strongly into the bowl. But OMG what a noise this thing makes! The whole anchorage will now surely know when we have a pee!
With this job done, we leave Cloudy Bay in the late afternoon and head off in our Dacia to Hyper-U. But before we enter the paradise-hipearket, we treat ourselves to a crepe to take away our fridge blues and just chill for a few minutes in our busy day.
While shopping in this amazing super market, with so much variety, is a pleasure, it’s also daunting with all this choice! In other islands we had to hunt for even the basics …. choice was never an issue and we could shop quickly. Here, we stay in the shop right up until closing time at 8:30pm!
Back on Cloudy Bay it’s impossible to get the shopping on board with the dinghy hanging on its davits. So we lower it on the water and squeeze in next to Cloudy Bay … hoping no one will take a fancy to it or it’s engine.
It’s midnight before Oana has stored all the food and Glen has cleared the front cabins for the guests. And it will be another early morning tomorrow. At least once Teo and Geta arrive, we can get back to being on holiday! Unless we’ll be assigned a 24/7 babysitting job…