Today was a dose of reality for those who think that living aboard a boat in the Caribbean is pure pleasure. I used the remaining car rental time to head to Electec to get a replacement and second spare impeller for the generator and do a bit of shopping; returning the car to Econocar$ at 10:00. Back at the boat I waffled and procrastinated for a while before finally starting the impeller replacement at about 11:00. I had the water drained at 12:00 and soon had the impeller pulled, which was an easy task considering that only 3 blades were left. I could only locate one of the broken blades, and realized that there would still be some remnants left over from the previous impeller exchange, so I had to attack the task of getting to the heat exchanger and finding a way of cleaning that. In order to reach the heat exchanger I had to remove all of the soundproofed housing, and in order to remove that I needed to take off several hoses which didn’t like the idea of being freed from their shackles. Once that task was done, I got one end of the exchanger opened up and decided to replace the zinc anode while I had access, but what remained of the zinc snapped off upon removal, so I had to use tweezers to try to remove the zinc bits and pieces. Once that was cleaned up and a new zinc inserted I closed that section off and wanted to open up the important input section, but in order to reach that I had to remove the oil filter, which in turn meant I had to perform an oil change at the same time! Once the oil was drained and the filter removed I finally got to the actual task and found a LOT of nasty junk blocking the heat exchanger tubes! The majority could be removed quickly through the aperture, but the balance had to be pulled out blindly using tweezers and this took a very long time to complete.
When I finished with that part of the job and resealed the heat exchanger I had to perform the major part of the job, inserting the new impeller and getting the pump put back together – this took a bit of sweat and time as well considering the bad access. And once the new impeller had been inserted I had to put the whole assembly, including tubes, pipes, housing and other items back into place.
I’m taking a break now, while running the generator for 15 minutes to ensure that there are no leaks and no more heat problems. It is 18:00.
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