Cave Cay, Bahamas
23.54.111N
76.16.179W
We awoke to rain this morning; just enough to run around closing all of the hatches but not enough to scrub the decks. So, we listened to the weather and confirmed that tomorrow is the day to make our move to Georgetown. If the winds died down at all today, it would take an anemometer to tell. Most of the day it howled through the rigging and rocked the boat just enough to never really let go and walk around.
The Tweaker in Chief decided that this would be a good time to commission the watermaker so he set about laying out all of the bits and parts and clearing an area in which to work. I settled another bag that had never been emptied and started cleaning or wiping down various surfaces that had fingerprints or smudges that were starting to drive me crazy. In the process I found a couple of peppers that were on their last leg, so I sliced an onion and sautéed them before adding them to the freezer.
Once Dale got the watermaker up and running (with only1 bit left over!) he gave me a bucket of water so that I could wash the salt off the windows and some of the algae starting to form in various nooks and crannies; can’t drink it, might as well use it for something useful.
We had taken a break to watch some 4-5 boats coming in our direction all heading to Georgetown, when we heard an alarm sound. Not a “we’re going to die alarm” but more of “something’s not right alarm”. We found it on the wowy zowy barometer Dale had picked up at the last boat show we attended. It was telling us that a gale was approaching. Nice to know if we hadn’t already been listening to the weather for the last 3 days. So, I started taking notes every couple of hours just to watch as we also heard that there was a low pressure area forming in the Gulf of Mexico, that no one seems to know what it was going to do.
Although it was sunny and the solar panels were putting “amps in the can” and the wind generator was doing the same, Dale decided he wanted to run the generator as well. EXCEPT, that once it started, it would die out. Now mind you, this is the same generator that he and Tinkering Consultant spent the better part of a week tearing down and putting back together and they ran it a good half hour back then. So, what had happened between then and now?
The Tweaker in Chief has always told me that diesels only need air, oil and fuel to operate and as long as they have that, they will run forever. Well, apparently this one was missing something; chief suspect was fuel. Thus, began the digging out of the tools, the headsets, clearing out of the “hole” where the generator lives and the investigation as to what was going on. I would listen on the headset inside and follow instructions. Switch the glow plugs, check. Try to start it, check. Can you hear the pump running in the main stateroom, check. Try turning on the engine, check. No! not turn it on, just turn it to the on position, OK, turn it off and then turn it to the on position, check. Then he would come in and do something down in the main stateroom and run back out and we’d do the whole thing again.
Then I hear “so why can’t I get fuel here?” How would I know? I can flip switches with the best of anyone; I can enter data into the chart plotter that causes little “x’s” to show up as waypoints; I can line up waypoints to turn into routes; I even know how to work the radar and AIS; its just button pushing but after that, it’s all MAGIC!
So, I try as best as I can, could it be air? You did open the vent. Maybe you really closed it. Nope, apparently once you take the lid off the generator, it gets all the air it needs. No, its fuel!
Well we did go through some pretty bouncy seas a few times, maybe we pinched something. He considers it; its either that or there is something clogging the fuel line between the main valve and the generator. As I understand it, this means tearing the head (bathroom) apart to follow the fuel line from under our bed to the forward compartment where the generator lives. Can’t wait for that to happen! He decides that we don’t have enough time left to do this today and puts his tools away. Where is the Tinkering Consultant when I need him? And believe me, its me that needs him.
