I’m certainly on the mend. I slept almost all the way through the night and weird visions and dreams that I’ve been having are gone. Modern medicine really is a miracle, almost magic. I am reminded of Arthur C. Clarke’s Third Law:
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Penicillin was discovered in 1928. Had someone administered it to cure an otherwise fatal infection a mere 20 years prior to that it would have been considered magical (or sorcery).
Generator (revisited)
While the diesel and water leak on the generator have been repaired, it is still a somewhat sick beast. It purrs smoothly along, but after a relatively short period it stops and the “high temperature” signal blinks. The saltwater coolant flow is low despite the impeller working. I suspect a blockage somewhere and am going to use my shop-vac to try to suck water back out of the heat exchanger in the hopes that this might free up some of the blockage. The generator has been off for 24 hours and hopefully will be cooled down. Since I’m removing the discharge side of the coolant system, I don’t expect much, if any saltwater leakage. Let’s see if my plan survives contact with reality (Helmuth von Moltke).
The plan didn’t survive contact with the enemy. I got the intake hose removed with a minimum of leakage and hooked it up to the shop-vac. In pressure mode it didn’t move anything at all, and in vacuum mode it just started deflating the plastic pail assembly. I traced the water line to the siphon break in the galley and disassembled that. The outgoing hose had no blockage, but the incoming hose was blocked. I turned on the suction at the pump and blew into the blocked siphon hose with all my lung capacity. At first nothing moved, but just as I felt my blood pressure swinging from the heavy blowing I felt it give a bit and then actually move! I mixed up some baking soda with vinegar and water in a pail and sucked that solution into the heat exchanger and let it sit for 30 minutes. Then sucked it all out, but there was still a lot of resistance that indicated blockage somewhere. I got the siphon break reinstalled and removed the outlet from the heat exchanger and checked the outlet side cleaning assembly. No blockage there. I’d already check the intake side so it seems that the heat exchanger itself is blocked internally. If the heads are anything to go by then it is most likely lime buildup.
I ran a couple of gallons of freshwater through the system – backwards, to flush out anything that would let itself be flushed. No particles came out but it seems to be flowing better. There’s little for me to do now, removing the heat exchanger is too much work for me to be doing here and I don’t have access to the necessary spare parts. So I put everything back together and have the generator running now. It is noon, so it has been just 3 hours of work today and that is enough for me. The water seems to be coming out with the exhaust gas at rates I remember, so perhaps the generator won’t shut down with overheating this time around, I’ll have to see how long it runs. Perhaps my fiddling around will have been successful.
Noon
I’m feeling much better on my second day so have developed an appetite. I don’t have any real food left in the galley (pasta, canned beans, canned veggies, rice, one pack of instant Ramen and one of Macaroni & Cheese don’t count), so will go ashore for either prepared food or grocery shopping.
The generator made an odd sound and stopped after about an hour. Several minutes before that I’d turned on the hot water heater element which uses quite a bit of power but since the batteries were already in absorption mode I didn’t think that would be a problem. Evidently it was. Although the engine has now cooled down, it will start but not keep running, and it is running roughly, as if one of the cylinders weren’t firing. I should just give it up for the moment.
Dinner
I was hungry by 17:30 and went ashore to Paparazzi’s for an early pizza dinner. It came quickly and was delicious. I was out of there by 19:00 and back aboard Zanshin to finish my book and make it an early night.