Martinique, day 24 – toilet electric conversion, take 2

Friday 11 May: Another busy day with maintenance.
First the rigger comes to check the cutter stay tension. Immediately he says it’s OK as it is. When we tell him we cannot seem to get the cutter luff tight enough in windy conditions he proceeds to show us how he should set it up.
He puts huge back stay tension on and also enormous runner tension. The mast looks like a banana, but sure enough the cutter luff is nice and tight. OK, so we simply need to be more aggressive with the rig tension. Within 15 mins he is gone, job done. That was an easy one.
Next, we receive an email from Jabsco saying that the toilet electric conversion kit must have a setup issue, which has likely damaged the pump. Not only will they not approve a warrentee replacement, they also tell us to buy a service kit to fix it!
Pfff, we’re not having that as an answer, so a rather assertive call is made to the email sender in UK. On the phone they back down and offer warrantee replacement “to close the issue”. Good. Sometimes you just got to get nasty…… just like the poo recycling in the toilet!
Within minutes the offending pump is removed and we are off to the Caraibe Marine shop for a replacement, before anyone changes their minds on this one. In the shop we make the swap but just before we leave Oana, thorough as ever, takes a look in the box. And it’s a good job she did. Not only is it no longer packaged per original, but clearly it’s been previously installed, and used!!
Without much of an apology they go to the store room and come out with a new unopened box. Well, we guess we know where the pump will be going, the one which we just returned …. back on the shelf.
To celebrate our success we treat ourselves to a Turkish Kebab. The owner is Turkish himself, but has lived in London and now married to a Martinique lady. He is very chatty and produces the best and biggest kebab we have ever seen. Afterwards we can hardly walk!
Back at Cloudy Bay the afternoon is spent installing the new electric toilet kit: soldering, running the hoses and putting in place. Finally it’s done and with our fingers crossed, we switch it on. Great! – it seems to work as it should.
But of course the real test will be tomorrow morning after coffee. Or maybe after that huge kebab, the test might be earlier than our normal ablution time 🙂
Next is a trip up the mast again. This time to retrieve the wind transducer. Our last one failed last year and we replaced it from U.K. But the provider had sent a short arm one rather than long arm. It all seemed to work OK until we flew the spinnaker across the Atlantic where it was severely disturbed, reading the wind speed and direction completely wrong.
A long story short, Jacque, our AIS engineer, has offered to do a swap for a long arm one. While retrieving it from the top of the mast, Glen is rather horrified to see the genoa halyard is severely frayed where it goes through the guide. That dynema halyard was new only 2 years ago. Just goes to show the wear that happens when you sail serious miles.
We will swap to the spare genoa halyard tomorrow and take this one to have the end cut and new loop spliced. Will the breakages ever stop??
That said, it was a great catch. We had the snap shackle break on the very same halyard last year, off Algeria in 25knts of wind. It ripped the genoa all down the luff line and ended up under the boat. It wasn’t funny trying to retrieve it at night. So we are glad we caught this one. You really do have to be looking and analyzing every damned piece of equipment all the time.
By the evening, all the tools are back away and the boat tidy again. A few more jobs done today.
We take the evening off and head out to see what night life is happening. In our favorite bar, KokoaRum, we find live music which is very pleasing to listen to. But at 10:30pm they shut down and start stacking the chairs and tables. So early!
So we take a stroll up into the La Marin village but there is nothing going on there either. Classic French village at night … completely dead! So back to Cloudy Bay ready for our road trip tomorrow.
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