Friday, December 11, 2009
07:00 in the morning, an espresso in hand and I have gotten started with installation of the AIS. If the generator part arrives this morning then I might be able to leave today for the BVI and the AIS would be nice to have working. I managed to split my finger open with a screwdriver, I will need a new family-size pack of Band-Aids soon; also I don’t want to dive in the dirty waters of Marigot for the plastic connector to the GPS antenna mount which went overboard yesterday. I will have to buy a complete new mount now. The batteries for the handheld drill are charging while I have breakfast ashore, once I return I’ll finish drilling the holes for the new fridge power optimization device and the AIS transceiver cables.
I spoke with Audrey at Electec and the part is to arrive at 13:00 and the technician would come right over. Amazingly enough, it did work out that way and he arrived at 2pm and started work. Things did not go well, and after over an hour and half of trying to removed the old bolts he said that we would need to lift out the generator and he wasn’t set up to do that today. He will be back on Monday…
I finally managed to get the GPS antenna cable for the AIS installed and, anticipating generator issues, had bought a 120Amp alternator to replace my current 80Amp one; I needed to file away some metal parts before I had the “drop in replacement” one mounted but it is now charging my batteries while my diesel runs and the original alternator is going to become my spare one.
I purchased a variable speed controller for the refrigeration system in order to optimize its performance and the controller unit pictured above at the far right confused me a bit – I had my questions answered but now need to find my second refrigeration unit for the freezer (it must be in there somewhere, but I cannot find it).