Wots Broken - Posted Late
Suzie Too - Western Caribbean
David & Suzanne Chappell
Mon 26 Apr 2010 21:12
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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.
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