Closing towards Grenada after yet another Cummins Onan raw water pump impeller f

Ticketeeboo
Sue & Alan
Wed 29 Jan 2014 09:40
Great sailing all the way since departing Barbados yesterday. We've been consistently exceeding 7kn and since the early hours, when Ray & Sandra reefed our poled-out genoa from 1 reef to just smaller than 2 reefs have exceeded 10kn and seen winds of 40kn as squalls have come through 'up the bum'. Autopilot inexcusable 'flipped' just after I took over again at 0410, needing prompt squirt into cockpit in the rain to take the wheel and restore order before telling autopilot not to do that sort of thing again (please)! Since then OK (thankfully) although squalls continuing, lots of windies and rain and occasionally speed going a little higher than I like to see, although no signs of Ticketeeboo being over-stressed in any way. If anything, seems best to ride out a squall at higher speed rather than try friggin' about in nasty conditions in the dark. 2 reefs is very conservative most of the time and any less leaves us wallowing on, under and bashed-by the waves, which seem to have a direct
ion of their own from time to time. Can't see them anyway in the black and for all purposes it's like sailing in a black 'ole so morning twilight will bbe very well received in just over an hour.
Just as Sue was preparing to serve a wonderfully tasty cottage pie (prepared by Sandra & Sue before we got underway) as the five-minute warning sounded (Sue's verbal alert to me because squiddy was still tempting fate as darkness fell from the east) I was just about to 'jump to it' and leave sending an email when generator stopped dead and Sue says "The generator's stopped!". A quick ganda at our remote panel indicates 'High Temperature Fault' . "I wonder what that's gonna be?" I says to myself. Knowing all to well it's almost certain to be yet another (yes there have been several identical 'that's a handy time to do it' failures in the last 4½ years)impeller failure. Whilst generally speaking, our Cummins Onan generator is a fine machine when it's working - the Sherwood impeller is a load of crap! The owners manual states that the impeller needs replacing annually or every 500 running hours. As if this might be possible? The last one lasted just 7 months after just 174 hours use and
that's the longest ever! I've been talking to Cummins Onan about this fault since the first one failed nearly five years ago and they still haven't come up with a fix-it! At first they claimed the fault is caused by how Discovery Yachts pipe-in our generator. I soon discovered, however, identical failures on similar generators installed by Beneteau, Amel and others - so Cummins Onan's attempts to shirk responsibility are wrongly founded here and I think time may be running out for them? Anyway, immediately after our delicious cottage pie evening meal (tea for me and dinner for posh people) I changed our crap pump for spare, which is ever-ready for such an occasion. The only difference nowadays, is that since I put a Y-strainer in the delivery flow hose, the impeller broken bits don't get into our heat exchanger so the job only takes one hour instead of three! Here's to the next time this crappy impeller prematurely fails again! I think Ticketeeboo will be relatively quiet tomorrow.
Why? Because the 145NM sail between Barbados & Grenada has been quite rolly and bumpy and the envious reputation of an Atlantic swell is very much intact and I suspect everyone has been wide-awake enjoying plenty different movements of the type normally experienced at the fair ground. I only take my Lover and friends to all the best places!!!
Ticketeeboo MMSI 235071989 Callsign 2CED3, Ham callsign = m0hng
At 29/01/2014 09:39 UT our position was 12°04.88'N 061°24.21'W
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