Projects / Maintenance – boat maintenance related news & photos by Cloudy Bay, Hallberg-Rassy 54 sailing yacht, cruising around the world. sailcloudybay.com
Thursday 10 May: Another public holiday today. The 2nd this week. You gotta love the French attitude to work!
On board Cloudy Bay it’s a much better day today, but certainly no holiday.
Late last night Glen re-plumbed the bow electric toilet conversion to absolutely minimize the piping between hull and the unit. But first poo of the day (we won’t mention who’s!) confirms that the damn thing still recycles the so-called black water (more like liquid poo water) back into the flush water. So very clearly this conversion either has a problem of there is a major design fault. We call the shop again, but they are still waiting for a reply from Jabsco to accept warrantee. And being France, Jabsco are on holiday! If they don’t agree to replace it soon, we will courier the damn thing, poo-filled and all, to them directly!
Regarding our Mastervolt Alternator, we receive a reply from Mark Racine in Mallorca. Mark has been a huge support over the last year with both the refit and all things electrical, even though he never actually had any of the business installing the systems.
He tells us that for the alternator to be drawing 3-4 Amps means that the regulator must be permanently on for some reason and that it should do no harm to start the engine to see if that resets it. He also offers to come in over Team Viewer to take a look at the system via USB connection …. Oooph the modern world huh? Amazing.
Anyhow, we opt to turn on the engine and try that first. As Glen goes to turn the key he realizes that it’s been left in the engine shut-down position, and not in the OFF position. Normally a spring brings the key back to the OFF position, but recently that spring has deceased!
With the key back in the OFF position we find the alternator’s regulator is no longer on. OMG! All that fuss and anxiety that we had filled the alternator full of water…when in fact it was simply the key that was in the wrong position. We start the engine and it all works perfectly! Suddenly a weight is lifted off our shoulders … there was nothing wrong with the alternator after all.
We celebrate with a nice coffee then continue to do small jobs and internet tasks that were overdue.
We can also finish with all the tools in the engine room and reconstruct the small hatch to the side of the engine under the galley sink and finally clean up that area.
Next thing that breaks is the freezer light bulb. Hmmm, that’s the 2nd one replaced this year. When we shut the freezer door the light should switch off, but of course we never know if it actually does or not as we cannot climb into the freezer and close the door. Well, maybe Oana could fit in there, but having seen too many horror films, she is not jumping to volunteer! But with the phone on video mode placed inside the freezer we quickly discover that the light doesn’t switch off with the door closed. Another one for the to be determined list. Meanwhile the freezer can do without a bulb for a while, as punishment!
At 3pm our elusive electronics technician is supposed to come and look again at our AIS. But of course he doesn’t show up. Oana walks to his office where he states he will be coming before the end of the day.
As we wait for him we find ourselves in the unusual position of having nothing to do! Finally he turns up at 5pm and completes the wiring. We now have a main and backup GPS for our Class-A AIS system to work on.
After trying to get at least 3-technicians to solve this one, we finally land a positive result. “If at first you do not succeed, try ,try and try again”. So true with yacht systems!
We end the day with a quiet evening listening to music, ready for our last day tomorrow. Just the cutter stay tension to sort out now, then we are good to go. It seems ages since we actually sailed anywhere. And in reality its almost 4 weeks now.