Good News and Not So Good News
Aurora_b
Mike and Liz Downing
Sun 8 May 2011 09:24
|
Good News - a call from Immigration on
Friday confirmed that our visa extension applications (submitted several
weeks ago) have been successful and we can definitely stay until
November this year. So we can stay in New Zealand until we fly back
home in the summer and again on our return until we get the boat ready to
leave in October. That's not ideal with the cyclone season starting again in
November, but it's better than having to leave now - a possibility as our
original visas run out tomorrow! More good news - the German
manufacturer of our wind generator has decide to replace the generator with a
new one free of charge. It's 4 years old and has always worked well, but
not as well as it should according to the specification, and they had agreed to
fix it under warranty when we reached one of their service agents. We
weren't expecting a new one! So it will be another trip to Auckland to collect
it, going via Hamilton to collect our passports with new
visas.
Not so good news, one of the four 130AH batteries in our
domestic battery bank suddenly and unexpectedly gave up the ghost on
Friday - an internal cell shorted and it got very very hot!
So after rewiring, we're now down to 3 and faced with the prospect
that the others might also fail soon. Before we leave NZ it looks
like 4 new batteries at somewhere between £200 and £400 a time, assuming we can
find ones that fit our battery box.
|