'Do you want ice with that?' and other new equipment
Ile Jeudi
Bob and Lin Griffiths
Tue 30 Oct 2012 19:27
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Tuesday 30 October 2012
The correct fridge arrived at Rolnautic last
Wednesday and we were told that work would start at 9am next day and to expect
ice by Friday evening! Thursday's 9am start became 5pm but at least the
old fridge was taken out by the end of the first day.
On Friday the fridge man turned up at 12.30pm and
stayed until 7pm - except for the time we spent away on the 1hr 45min
lunch! My attempts to limit this to a quick, single course snack came to
nothing so in the end I was told 'the installation won't be completed until
Monday'.
On Saturday we decided to ride off to the beach area in Las
Palmas. It's a large city of 500,000 people and it's seems unusual to find
beaches here but they were very popular, more so with locals than tourists who
stay in other parts of Gran Canaria in the main.
The city beach:-
 The bikes:-
 Monday was fridge day again. The new one
consists of a Frigoboat compressor cooling a Waeco evaporator with water pumped
through a hull fitting made by Isotherm. This seemed like a recipe
for disaster to me but thankfully it was all running by 2pm. For
the first time in a long time we didn't have to throw away half a litre of
milk and some fresh food. The new fridge has a small freezer section
which the old one didn't so Lin is chuffed.
G&T's - with ice - were part of our celebration
on Monday evening. Note the condensation. The glass with
the larger amount of ice isn't mine:-
 On Tuesday Lin went on a fresh food shopping
blitz. Simple things make us happy! More new gear
Over the last week we have bought and fitted a
towed generator to help charge the batteries when on long passages. We
first came across this when we met Peter and Lorraine in Madeira who had fitted
one to their Rustler 42 and spoke very highly of it. The Sweden 42, 'Mary
Jo' here in Gran Canaria has one as well and they also rated it. It
consists of a type of alternator connected to a propeller by 30 metres of
line which you throw over the back of the boat when sailing.
The propeller twists the rope which turns the alternator which generates
some amps for the batteries. It is old technology and the output is not
vast but it is continuous provided we are sailing at 4 knots or more.
We pay a half knot penalty because of drag (yes Richard, I know!)
which is a good trade off for us as we can't carry enough diesel to run the
engine for a couple of hours every day for 3 weeks across the
Atlantic. It should be a great boon when sailing overnight when the
solar panels aren't doing anything.
Nick and Kerry, two of the crew on Mary
Jo were really good in helping us to decide where to mount the kit as they
had experience of the angle at which the line would run off the back and how it
will operate. In fact we have spent quite a bit of time with these guys.
They are really entertaining and it's been great fun getting their perspective
on life and ocean passagemaking on a boat with 4 people.
The 'business end' of the towed generator mounted
in it's frame to the rear deck waiting for 30 metres of line and turbine to
be connected to the black bit:-
 I ran the cabling through the boat and even
though the instructions say you 'simply connect the cables directly to the
batteries' I decided to 'get a man in' to advise. It is nearly as simple
as that but not quite given the complexity of some of our electrical
equipment on board so I was really glad to have the
electrician.
Just connect the cables there:-
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