Progress....
Ile Jeudi
Bob and Lin Griffiths
Wed 9 Jan 2013 16:46
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Wednesday 2 to Wednesday 9 January
2012
Jean-Marie arrived on Wednesday 2 January as
promised and fitted the new membrane and high pressure pump for the watermaker
and we fired it up. The quality of the water being produced was tested and
was excellent but the pressures in the system were still too low. After
lot's of head scratching and testing it was concluded that the head of the
electric pump was worn. As this is a €600 item J-M suggested he comes back
tomorrow with a used one to fit as a test to see if this improved
things.
No show all day Thursday and no telepone call
either. This is not unusual in the marine industry! However J-M
appeared on Friday and we fitted the old pump head. All pressures
increased - not to the required levels as this was also an old worn pump head -
but enough to demonstrate that we were looking at a solution to the
problem. J-M is the local agent for Spectra watermakers (a different
manufacturer to ours) and 'fortunately' he had a new pump head in
stock from Spectra's 60 litre per hour system, which is the same production
rate as ours.
We fitted that and ..... no change.
Pressures down again. Further inspection revealed that Spectra's pump head was smaller than Eco-Sistem's one so he
went off and got another one with a larger output. This was fitted and
we got the highest freshwater production we have ever had! It
is at the cost of much higher amp draw. I pointed out to J-M that
every time he visits our boat he increases the drain on the
batteries (the same happened when he fitted the new fridge)! In this
case it shouldn't be a problem as we have to run the engine or generator anyway
when the watermaker is on. The main components of a watermaker system are
the electric pump, the membrane and the high pressure pump all of which have had
expensive attention over the last few weeks (all were necessary though due to
the age of the system).
In the meantime we decided that a couple of lines
which control the mainsheet track needed replacing and we got Rolnautic to make
up new ones with splices. I collected these on Saturday to fit them and
then proceeded to destroy the head of one of the two bolts I needed to
remove. I am good at this - tackling one job but creating another.
In fact it's a gift. The bolts are
stainless steel and they screw into aluminium alloy fittings. With
seawater around acting as an electrolyte different metals tend to seize.
Anyway I couldn't complete the job until I get a
man in to help remove the seized, destroyed bolt. It was a holiday
here on Monday so this had to wait until Tuesday when Jon Crouch of Jon Crouch
Yacht Services came and removed the old bolt in about 10 minutes without further
damage. A really nice man who was very interesting to talk to. I got
the replacement bolts on Wednesday and finished off the simple job of changing
the two lines!
For anybody reading this who has lost the will to
live - something on a lighter note. I mentioned that we played a game
called 'Therapy' with our friends Ian and Judith on Zaurak and that this tells
you a lot about eachother's personalities. Ian and Judith gave me a
T-Shirt for Christmas which they felt expressed my personailty
well.
I think the shirt refers to my tendency to leap
into everything I do without hesitation, fear or trepidation:-
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