As I have mentioned in the last two blogs, there are two tropical waves heading in our general direction, each with its own tropical disturbance. The picture attached to this blog shows their latest position and their potential, general direction. The closest one appears to be moving too fast (20 to 25 knots) to form a meaningful storm as it races just to the north of us. However, some winds and lots of rain are associated with it. It is the second disturbance that we are watching very closely. It is a slow moving system and is slowly gathering some force. The probability that it will form into a hurricane has increased from 40% to 50%, generating a greater interest on our part. We are using our various weather sources to track this spot of unsettled weather as it slowly moves across the Atlantic. One of the descriptions used by NOAA is:

“A tropical wave is in the far east Tropical Atlantic with axis
that extends from 18N22.5W to a 1009 mb low near 11N22.5W. These
features are moving west at about 10 kt over the past 24 hours.
The wave coincides well with a low to mid level trough extending
northward through the Cabo Verde Islands. Scattered moderate to
isolated strong convection is evident within 90 nm of the center.
Despite increased convection, the earlier microwave imagery
showed the low level structure is still fairly weak at this time.”

While our original plans were to continue heading north and pass from the Windward to the Leeward Islands once our friends, Dwight and Kati, left; we are now staying put until this disturbance is better defined. Thus, we are hunkered down here in Rodney Bay Marina. We talked this afternoon as to what things we would be doing to while the time away, waiting for this storm to pass. Alas, we are at a loss since we have done the few things that there are to do here when Dwight and Kati were with us. Looks like we will just sit and get moldy…

Looking for things to do, I did unwind a mystery regarding our generator today. A few days ago the sensor that measures the salt water cooling water exit temperature failed, automatically shutting down its operation. This is the same sensor that had failed and we replaced this last January. Once again, it had corroded and fallen apart. Hmmm. The original sensor lasted over 8 years and this new one only lasted 6 months.

I decided to remove the majority of the metal panels that cover the generator to do a detailed inspection of the unit and to discover what was causing this unusual, rapid corrosion. What I discovered is the hose that is clamped onto the exhaust manifold elbow was not clamped tightly and had let salt water spray out as a fine mist at one time. The hose and the clamps were all crusted with salt as was the top of the generator housing and there was a thick layer of salt on the drip pan underneath. Apparently, when we had the generator removed to reseat the mounting bolts that had pulled out due to the pounding we took coming down the Madagascar Channel and rounding the Cape of Good Hope, the mechanic did not properly tighten the two hose clamps. Over the last year they have let a fine mist of spray spew out. The spray hit the temperature sensor and corroded it until it fell apart. It is also of interest that I saw this was also near the same location where the battery cable had failed due to massive corrosion. We had this repaired just a month or so ago when we were in Barbados. The South African mechanic must have nicked that cable when he remounted the heavy generator and this nick in the cable cover allowed the salt water spray to enter and over time caused this massive cable to completely corrode through and fall apart.

With this discovery, I now have something to focus on while we wait for the weather to pass…