Night
I cursed the boat that forced me to move from my comfortable slot in the lagoon to this miserable spot outside. The rolling remained barely tolerable and now the little waves were slamming into the aft section of Zanshin and making shuddering booming noises every couple of seconds. Only 24 more hours of this, and then it should get somewhat better.
Work
I had a normal workday in the office and hadn’t realized that both Friday and Monday were holidays in Germany; that explained why so many of my colleagues weren’t reachable as they taken advantage of the two days off to extend their break.
Generator Woes
My issues with Electec continue. The parts order that they wanted to place for me was quite expensive with a gasket kit for the engine and a set of piston rings, plus shipping. I no longer trust them to actually get the parts here, so I asked for the part numbers and wanted to purchase them in the USA and ship them myself. Once I had the part numbers, I quickly found them for sale online. But then I noticed that they were for a much larger engine. The diesel in my generator is a Kubota V1505 model, and the parts were for much larger V2203 model. At first the people at Electec stated that the numbers were right. I asked them to confirm, knowing that they could not be right. Then they said that they’d read the model and serial number from my generator and used that for the order.
At that point I knew that they were lying, as the serial number is located where it cannot be accessed without a mirror on a stick and the technician had certainly not done that. I politely sent the picture and asked them to confirm that this was what they’d used and haven’t heard back from them. I am curious as to what their excuse is going to be when they get back to me and if they will have the decency to apologize.
Disassembly
I decided that Electec was going to ignore my recommendation that the technician continue disassembly of the engine before the new gasket kit arrived so that he could determine what the actual problem was, in case additional parts are going to be needed.
That meant I would take the engine top off, and I soon had access to the valve top and removed the valve train. The valves all moved and sounded good, and the condition of the assembly looked excellent, so I knew I’d have to take the next step and drain the coolant and remove the engine top. But then I hit my first snag.
The are two hoses for the saltwater cooling system that leave the enclosure and lead to a siphon break. I remove the hose clamps but couldn’t remove the hoses. Access is very difficult there, so I had no leverage and no room to get any tools into that small space. I think it took 2 hours or so until I finally had the 2 hoses removed and the panel that they held in place taken out. I needed to do that in order to reach the coolant drain petcock at the heat exchanger. I stopped at this stage, replaced the floor panel and took a cleansing shower. The black dust from the disintegrating soundproofing outside layer is particularly hard to get rid of.
Ashore
I went ashore to the Soggy Dollar so that I could escape the incessant rolling around at anchor. I met up with some other cruisers, all of them safely tucked away inside the lagoon and comfortable in their anchoring spots. C’est la vie!