Friday, June 24, 2016

Generator Woes

Now that we are settled here in Stuart for a while we are re-tackling the generator issue. It hasn't run since March 9th when we closed the boat up and went home to California for two months. When we got back to the boat we tried and tried to start it, but never succeeded.

We knew there was a leak at the injection pump, so we had it rebuilt there in Puerto Rico, but it still wouldn't start. The Captain did a few tests and discovered we had no compression, so we set that project aside and started cruising like we did back in the 80s.

You've probably heard about this kind of cruising. It's not quite as bad as the Pequod; but we have no water maker and no refrigeration, so we buy ice all the time, and conserve water like crazy.

Today the Captain removed the head and we could see why we have no compression: the valves are full of carbon (from the bad injection pump) and corrosion (from the marine invironment). Probably if we'd been using it regularly, this wouldn't have happened so suddenly, but it would have happened eventually, so no big.

Using the marina-provided bicycles, we pedaled our way to a machine shop this afternoon and dropped the head off for repair. Hopefully, this will fix the problem and we'll be generating 110 again soon. 

No comments: