December 01 - 17, 2004

December 1 - 17, 2004 As is our custom when we anchor the boat, December 1 was a quiet day. We didn't get off the boat while we made sure that the anchors were well set. On December 2, the machine shop that is working on our head pump called to say that our pump is ready. So, we went down to Dakota (a local shopping district outside of Oranjestad) to pick it up. Mind you, this pump weighs somewhere in the neighborhood of 75 pounds! We lugged the pump back to the main street, and then caught a bus back to Oranjestad. During the afternoon, we installed the pump, and finally, we are back to two working heads on the boat! On December 3, since there were so many boats (5) in the anchorage (normally there aren't more than two, us and Yoel - who has been on the island for almost 10 years), we invited everyone over for cocktails. It was a lot of fun. We had two Swedish boats, a Dutch guy and his Venezuelan girlfriend, and Yoel. It was a great evening, and perfect timing, since the Swedish boats are leaving tomorrow for Cartegena! On December 4, I (Bryan) woke up with a sore throat. Actually, I had had a tickle in my throat for a few days, and it worsened, significantly overnight, so for the next few days I took it easy while getting over the sore throat. On December 8, we put up the Christmas lights. This year we decided to string them under the aft hand rail, and then down the gate stanchion. They look really great! After that, we changed Tinky's oil and oil filter, and removed Ling-Ling's sound shield in preparation for investigating the alternator problem that we are having. Our initial thoughts were that the earth ground solenoid had been mis-wired. So, that fix wouldn't be a difficult correction to make. On December 9, we spent many hours examining Ling-Ling. After checking everything we could, we reviewed the wiring diagram. It is our belief that the VCS board controls the alternator field excitation. We are having a problem with our VCS unit, and need to replace it. But up till now, the board has still been working. There is a fuse that could be the problem, but it is extremely difficult to reach. I will have to dismantle half of the capacitor system to check the fuse. So, until I have the time to do that, our temporary solution is to independently charge Ling-Ling's battery. On December 10, our fresh water pump pressure switch died! We switched over to the AC water pump, and started looking to see if we had a spare pressure switch. We didn't, so we then checked the marine store on Aruba. They have the pump, but don't carry any spare parts for it! So, we contacted our mail service and asked them to get us one and then send it with our mail. On December 13, we flushed the cooling system on Ling-Ling, changed her oil and oil filter. We need to purchase a new feeler gauge that is decent, otherwise I would have checked the valve clearance as well. We started working on our list of critical items, necessary items, and wish list items for our future trip to Hawaii. On December 14, Kat asked me to help her set some computer stuff up. So, in the morning, I headed off with her. Just as we were finishing, Mike called me to ask that I return to the boat immediately since we were having a wind reversal, fortunately it turned out to be a mild one. He put out our small stern anchor, which turned out to be all we needed to hold us. December 15 was a frustrating day for us! We went in to the Internet cafe to download some stuff, and to research the broken capacitors on a few chargers. We figured that if we could replace the burned component, we would be up three more chargers! Not only that, but with the additional charging power, none of the chargers will need to work as hard, and hopefully, they won't have the same problem again. After we finished at the Internet cafe, we headed to Radio Shack to look for the capacitors. We talked to the technician there who identified the capacitor, and said that our best hope was to find them at Telestar Electrical. So, we walked from one end of town to the other end of town. The guy at Telestar gave us a couple of capacitors that he thought would work. We brought them back to the boat, and soldered the new components into the boards of the chargers. We hooked them up, and , nothing happened. For what ever reason, the chargers aren't working. On December 16, we took all three chargers in to Telestar. Hopefully they will be able to fix at least one of them, though fixing all three would be ideal. After that, it was back to the Internet cafe. We keep a list of things that we want to get more information on. We managed to go through that list, completely. Now we have lots of things to review. We came home, and I made fudge while Mike worked on sorting out the information we downloaded. On December 17, we went back to the Internet cafe, again. This time, we wanted to upload our web site to a new hosting server. That worked, sort of. The connection from the internet cafe kept cutting out and causing our upload to fail. We sent an e-mail to Liz and she managed to get the site uploaded for us. We had given her a copy of our web site on CD, before she left the Island in case we had trouble getting it uploaded. We also did a few other things as well while we were there before heading off to the grocery store. After we got back to the boat, things got interesting. I Heard from Mom that my brother needed to get in touch with me. We talked for a few minutes, and then She called my brother who, in turn, called me to let me know that our stepmother had passed away. After talking with David, Mike and I headed in to town to get some phone cards so I could make phone calls. After dinner, I called Dad. We spent quite some time talking