Day 8.......relaxing of sorts....

andromeda of plymouth
Susan and Andrew Wilson
Tue 30 Nov 2010 15:07
.......with a very relaxed and slightly boozy day yesterday for some, day 8 dawned with an extremely calm morning on the marina. The crew are extremely thankful for the shower facilities after a hot and sticky night, which according to local sources is almost unherard of here - typically they experience 25 knots of wind all day every day - the ongoing saga of dodgy weather for the arc this yesr continues...
 
Mum has again demonstrated an amazing ability to keep the boat stocked with provisions - after wandering out to look for the absent engineer (who agreed to come to see us first thing in the morning to look at out generator) she returned less than a minute later with a crate of beer!
 
After his delayed start, the engineer seemed able to diagnose the generator issue within several minutes of looking at it - apparently the issue is that the installation of the generator on board was done in such a way that it can't be used at sea because the rocking and rolling motion of the boat causes the oil in the sump to slosh around, and the wonderful safety features of said generator cause it to shut down instantly when it does not pull in oil. It needs a special oil sump which will take time to source, time which we don't have - had we known this it would have been one of the things to fix before we left - ho hum.....the wonders of information and operational manuals...........!. It should be relatively straightforward to source a petrol generator to sit on the deck and plug into the shore power to keep all of the essentials ticking over happily, next stop a generator source, however relatively striaghtforward may be somewhat different in practice here.
 
Right now we are all lounging underneath what is without a doubt the most colourful sun tent in the marina and enjoying the odd cooling breeze, with the intention of getting underway again tomorrow or thursday morning once the wind is likely to start up again.
 
Chris
S/V Andromeda