I’ve got a slew of Post-It® notes stuck at my navigation station, each listing one task that I plan on doing aboard Zanshin. Some of them have been there quite a while, luckily the sun doesn’t turn them more yellow than they already are, but on of them looked pretty well bleached-out by UV so I finally started the task after breakfast: add a 12V fan to the compressor area. This fan, with power pickups from the refrigerator controller, will push air into the chamber where the two compressors are located and hopefully ensure that more airflow arrives, which in turn should make the two devices more efficient. I’ve had the parts aboard for a long time and gathered all the materials together and soon had the wires soldered and crimped and before I knew it the job was finished!
Basking in that feeling of satisfaction I checked my solar panels and found that only 5 out 6 were producing power. It took me about two hours to sort that problem out – at first I misdiagnosed that the MPPT controller was defective and replace it with my spare one, but that didn’t solve the issue. It turned out to be a bad connection in the through-hull power leads and that is on my list to replace with something more robust once I’m in St. Martin.
After the work I dinghied to Cinnamon Bay in order to take a walk along the trail(s) beginning there. I did the short Cinnamon Bay Self-Guided trail through the ruins of an old sugar plantation and then took the more challenging trail up the hill to the ruins on America Hill. I needed the water this time, as the trail was steep and not in much shade. It was a good hike up to the top, although at the end of the trail was a sign warning “AREA CLOSED Dangerous Structure” and had I heeded it I would most likely have been the first person to do so – after that arduous hike nobody is going to be deterred by a sign when the area around the ruins have been cleared.
I put my camera into a waterproof bag and used the paddle board to go to Francis Bay, where I strapped on the sandals and went on a short and easy hike along the Francis Bay Trail and as I was on a roll with the camera I ended up taking too many pictures. With two hikes in new territory I ended up with a number of pictures that I liked, so today’s blog entry has a plethora of pictures. I took many more and had to prune and delete the more uninteresting shots.
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