Tuesday, 13 Feb: Enthusiastic morning start, confident that the generator would work just fine after our efforts yesterday. As we discuss over breakfast just how clever we are to fix it, it abruptly shuts down! Same issue “water over temp”. What the $&@ck!! What can the problem be?? Cleaning the heat exchanger and changing the hoses didn’t do the trick.
Glen makes a call to Whisper-Power in Netherlands. They are perplexed too, but do mention that the next weak point is the flow around the electrical generator part, or a worn out impeller housing. They mention that the raw water should flow at 20 liters per minute. Hmmm, Glen says it’s doing 5 liters/min at best. So starts the investigation.
With multiple lengths of hoses, buckets and containers of water, he sets about finding where the flow is restricted. Impeller by itself seem OK, flow at 20 ltr/min. Then adding in the electrical cooling the flow is massively reduced. There’s the problem. Obviously it’s blocked in there. But we have run out of descaler, so we are off to town. We catch the University bus to the ACE hardware store, where it feels like a little paradise for big boys. We didn’t find quite the right type of descaler, but we did successfully manage to fill a small basket of other very useful items …. as we always tend to do in hardware stores.
On the way back, we take a normal bus, which was a completely different experience. The driver is assisted by a bully-man who is in charge of grabbing passengers and shoving them into the bus, pushing being the method of choice. Not a nice experience.
Back to the boat, another big job begins to get descaler into the right place. After circulating descaler, vinegar and whatever else Glen could lay his hands on, the flow finally improves after several hours.
So time to put the generator back together, clean the engine room, and put all the tools away…. just like we did yesterday! Only this time we only do it after running the generator at full load for over an hour …. while watching it intently. Hurray! Success. It works OK at full load for an hour. One very big job done! It took 3 days, but happy we have sorted it out. It was starting to feel like a hobby!
Glen is covered in sweat so dives in to cool off. Once in, he takes a look at the hull and finds everything covered in a thick green slime 🙁 Clearly we have been in this bay toooo long. While Glen is doing this, Oana is determined to master the cooking of green plantains, so a snack is in order now that the engine room door is shut for good. They are yummy but the juice that comes out when you cut them is lethally sticky – and refuses to clean off anything very easily.
Then out to the students food court, by the University, walking distance from our mooring. We imagine it can get very lively in the evenings or weekends, as there are several huts with various types of food and drinks. It’s surprising how many Americans attend University in Grenada. We decide for some ice cream, and what a surprise we get! The scoops are huge, the largest we ever had! And yummy!
Back to boat, admin needed again, this time on sorting photos and uploading first batch on Facebook for Grenada album. We find this task is less painful with a rum punch in hand! Are becoming “local”, only happy with rum in hand??