MARTINIQUE

Around the world with the Aqualunies
Jonathan & Gabrielle Lyne
Tue 6 Dec 2016 22:51
We are now along side a pontoon in Marin in Martinique having our electrical problem sorted. It was quite interesting every-time we flushed the loo, worked a winch or put any electrically strong thing on all hell would leet loose, all the alarms would go off, all the Navionics would go blank and the steering, so whenever we need to flush the loo somebody had to be on standby to sort the alarms out, once the serge of electricity stopped it would all go back to normal again, phew!! An expert came on board to sort us out this afternoon and came with an infrared heat detector and soon discovered the cables between one of the batteries was hot and had not been crimped properly……. he has now replaced it and will check everything else over tomorrow. A sigh of relief from Jonathan who was thinking of having to replace the whole battery bank which would have been a huge financial problem for us although they are supposed to have a legal guarantee of at least two years so we should have got the money back eventually, it would have also taken awhile to replace them and spoilt our plans for Christmas.

We have had some amazing sailing days with good easterlies blowing and have been humming along at 8.5 - 9 knots. This yacht is beautiful and just cuts through the water with no problem picking up her skirts and just running, good on you Ron Holland for designing such a great yacht, we love her design and her inside for living she is a very comfortable home for 6 months of the year.

Our plan, all being well, is to head to Fort de France to do some food shopping for Christmas food if we can, I have also heard the shopping is quite Parisian, that I have yet to see, it will be fun finding out…. We will then head to St. Lucia to hopefully meet up with Augusto, my nieces partner, who, we hope, will have finished the ARC by then after a very slow crossing of 21 days on his Beneteau 57 yacht, there have been a huge amount of wind holes this year so the ARC has been very slow.

Will let you know the results of our electrical survey tomorrow.