November 1-13, 2004 -- Generator Woes and Friends Visit After waiting all week, the mechanic finally showed up on Thursday, November 4 to start putting things back together. The generator re-assembly continued through Sunday, November 7, when we test fired the generator. After test firing, we went out to dinner with Liz and Sarge, friends who were visiting from the U.S. We had been hoping to be out at anchor by the time they arrived so that we could spend some time with them on the boat, and perhaps go out sailing. Unfortunately, that didn't happen! On Monday, November 8, the mechanic came back out. We discovered that oil has been blown into the fresh water system. So, we removed the oil cooler and pressure tested it. Sure enough, we discovered that the oil cooler had gone bad. We needed to order a new one! Since there was nothing further the mechanic could do, he left. First we checked with Fisher Panda about a new oil cooler, since we weren't sure if the oil cooler was an add on part from them, or if it was a part furnished by Kubota. Fisher Panda said the part would have to come from Germany and take 4-6 weeks to arrive at Fisher Panda U.S.A., before they shipped it to us here in Aruba, adding another week to two weeks to the time frame! On Tuesday, November 9, we spoke with South East Power. They are a Kubota parts dealer in the U.S. They confirmed that the part is a Kubota part. They do not have it in stock, but they expected to be able to get it from the South East distributor. We could have it overnighted to South East Power, for an additional fee, or we could wait for their regular shipment, and it would arrive at South East Power in a week. Which means we were still looking at 3 weeks, or an additional $100.00 to the price to speed things up. So, we decided to call the Kubota dealer in the U.K. That evening, we went out to dinner with Liz and Sarge at Cuba's Cookin'. It was a fun evening, and a nice diversion from the issues of our generator. On Wednesday, November 10, we called the U.K. Kubota dealer. They don't have the part either. However, they could have the part in a day, at no extra charge, and then ship it out immediately! The price was a tiny bit more than the U.S. Price. We ordered the part. Then we tried to go snorkeling with Liz and Sarge. Unfortunately, it started raining. It rained virtually non-stop the rest of Wednesday, and all day Thursday, November 11. Our original plan had been to go snorkeling on Wednesday afternoon, and then return to the boat for dinner. However, because of the rain, we canceled dinner on Wednesday, and decided that whether it rained or not, we would do dinner on the boat on Thursday. So, Liz and Sarge came out to dinner Thursday. It was a fun evening. On Friday, November 12, we succeeded in snorkeling! It was a fun day with Liz and Sarge. We went down to Spanish Lagoon. There actually wasn't that much Coral, but there were quite a few fish swimming around. On Saturday, November 13, Liz and Sarge flew back to the U.S. We didn't do much. We are still in a holding pattern, waiting for the oil cooler

Sunday, November 14 was a pretty quiet day. Monday, November 15 was my (Bryan) birthday. On Tuesday, November 16, the oil cooler arrived! We picked it up and called the mechanic. He will come out tomorrow to install it. On Wednesday, November 17, the mechanic installed the new oil cooler. The generator is now running! We flushed the cooling system to remove as much of the oil as we could. Now, we need to burn off the oil used in assembling the new pistons. So, on Thursday, November 18, we ran the generator for several hours to burn off the oil used in assembling the new pistons. On Friday, November 19, we checked the generator for the smoking issue. It is still smoking on start up, indicating that it is burning oil. We called the mechanic, and he said that he would come back out on Monday. We spent a quiet weekend. It has been raining, pretty much straight since Liz and Sarge left, so we haven't been able to laundry. On Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, the sun came back out and we took advantage of that to do laundry. On Wednesday, November 24, we put the dinghy up on deck to investigate and repair the intermittent light problem. We have tried this several times, and never been able to identify the problem. With all of the rain the light problem has gotten significantly worse. So, we worked in between the rain. After running through a series of tests, we came to the conclusion that the positive wire had gone bad. We replaced the wire, and everything is working again! Between November 25 and November 30, we put the boat back together. In order to do the work on the generator, we had to remove the dining table so we could lift the soft patch. So, we reassembled everything. This actually took quite some time! On November 30, we pulled off the dock. The thing about Varadaro Marina is that we can only enter and exit there at near high tide. So, we left the dock 3 hours before high tide and headed toward the "deep channel". It took three tries, but we finally made it! It is so nice to be back at anchor again