Wots Broken - Posted Late

Suzie Too - Western Caribbean
David & Suzanne Chappell
Mon 26 Apr 2010 21:12
Well I know I have moaned and bitched ,but if I get things in perspective we have done really well on the boat, over 8,000 miles since we left England in May and we have overcome most problems
 
The issues have been the MasterVolt - replaced with a new unit in Portugal. The aft heads motor had a shaft seal leak, so had to be replaced and we cleared out all the calcium from the water pipe. At the moment the bow thruster is not working, and I haven't even bothered to look at it, it's not really necessary for river moorings, although sometimes useful to keep the bow on the wind while anchoring. The generator broke its fan belt and whacked the fuel filter so that we had a diesel leak for a day, but that's all sorted. One of the air con controllers has packed up, but we haven't used the a/c that much - we are not in marinas and I don't want to use the generator more than necessary, plus when you do go out it's nearly 40 degrees and you have to re-aclimatise again.
 
In addition the AutoPilot controller packed up months ago - it works, but the display is not working, so no problem - but so far I am up to £5,000 of spares from Greenham Regis and I haven't even ordered chandlery or lifted out, antifouled etc - this is an expensive game
 
It has been unusually warm this year according to the organisers, the hottest for the last 5 years with the least amount of rain, in Alter do Chao where we are now they have never see the beach on the peninsula, although we do seem to be getting rain now and the beach is fast disappearing.
 
As we mentioned earlier we had the usual problems with the genoa car shackle, the kicker blaock and a backstay shackle, but have not broken a single sheet or halyard. The worst problem has been the Balamar alternator which seems to have a failed regulator when we were in Belem, I decided to try and get a truck one fitted at 120amps, big disaster, they chopped my Balmar bracket botched the job and the fan belt cut through a pipe conduit and a heavy duty cable - for R$ 2,400 - about Euro 1,000. However I discovered that the parallel switch not only supplies domestic power to the engine start battery, but also allows the standard engine alternator to charge the domestic batteries, so I removed the botched job and will fit a new one in Trinidad. So bring spare regulators for your alternators when you come this way - at least have 2 alternators - some of the catamarans have 4 - that seems enough.