July 27-31, 2001 -- Installations and Triumph

This morning, we continued working to ready the aft of the boat for installation of the DC freezer system. A squall hit this afternoon while we where napping, it woke us up and by the time we got to the helm we were seeing 40 knots on the wind meter. The first gust is always higher so it may have been 50 knots or so. The aft canvas got blown down and the teeth on the zipper came out. I will need to put in a new zipper. We started the engines first thing in case we dragged; fortunately, we did not. When we went to shut down the engines the Port engine would not shut off. The linkage on the cutoff came out, apparently the cotter pin fell out then the linkage bolt. Mike will need to crawl outboard of the engine tomorrow once it cools. On July 28, Mike crawled outboard of the port engine. He quickly located the linkage pin. He discovered that he could not repair it immediately, so we used a coat hanger to temporarily repair it. After he crawled out, we examined the pin and found that the spot weld had given out. July 29 was the fourth day of rain we have had. We ran the generator all day to help get the freezer temperature down in anticipation of our new DC freezer system installation on Monday or Tuesday. On July 30, I went for my morning walk then ran into the marine store for 10/2 wire that is needed for the freezer. The installation was started today, but as is standard in the islands they did not come prepared. They came with the plate and compressor and the freon lines, but low and behold they did not come with lines for the raw water pump that runs the compressor. On the plus side getting anything done here is much cheaper then in the states, but you have to constantly make sure they show up and or do the job right. It makes paying a little bit more to get something done right worth it. On July 31, the freezer installation was completed with the exception of dressing everything in. We fired the system up at 11:00 AM AST. We checked the system periodically all day long and it is working like a champ! The carpenter came and installed the new door for our chargers, it looks great as well!