The refrigerator door challenge
09 June 2012 | Anchored at Papeete, Tahiti, French Polynesia
Larry Nelson
Everyone talks about things that break during their voyage. Most involve remove and replace type of repair activities. Unfortunately not all things can be repaired this way. This is a custom boat. Replacing sometimes involves making things all over again, only this time changing them enough that they last a little longer (we hope).
Today the refrigerator door latch failed. It failed when the door was shut. The beer was on the other side of the door and access is ONLY available through this door. The grill partitioning of the refrigerator (i.e. shelves) prevent access from the top. It is possible to remove these grills, but that would make access difficult. We like our door! And besides we have to open the door to remove these grills. And if we disable the latch, so to open the door again, we need something to keep the door shut after we access our beer. The broken latch is the only means of keeping the door shut. Having an open refrigerator is almost as time critical as having a toilet break. What to do? I should mention that the latch that broke is glued into the door because there is a vacuum panel behind it for insulation. We cannot just remove and replace the latch because finding a latch that will work was a major issue in Seattle when the boat was built and isn't any easier to find 12 years later in French Polynesia.
We removed the door by unscrewing the hinges. This left us with no door on the refrigerator so whatever we were going to do needed to be done quickly. We tried drilling the latch to provide a new means of operating it with something like a rope loop. The latch was very hard and drilling did not work. Besides, the space was just not sufficient to get the rope behind the latch and thus encircle it. We tried hard even with thread and fish line. That idea just didn't pan out. Meanwhile the refrigerator energy was leaking all over the floor...
Karen gets the credit here. She suggested an external latch, something like Karl Jacobsen fashioned for us to hold the refrigerator top door open. Of course we didn't have time to fashion one, so we simply moved Karl's latch to the front of the door. It works great! I've posted a picture so you can see how it is rigged. We'll fashion a more proper latch when we get to New Zealand. Meanwhile, we can hold the top door open easily when we access our cold water which is stored there. It's a minor inconvenience that will be corrected in New Zealand.
Karl Jacobsen has saved us more pain than I can record in this short blog. he deserves a medal from us, but how to deliver it? Karl, you may be insufficiently medaled, but you are our hero.
Additional details of the SV Carisma trip were revealed at movie night (a viewing of Captain Ron) last night. It turns out that about the third day without wind Chris decided the boat would motor in reverse (but only very slowly in forward gear) so they motored all night backwards until wind came in the morning. They motored again in reverse to enter the harbor and transit a long passage by the airport. This greatly confused the harbormaster who controls traffic by the airport since the boat was facing the wrong direction. Of course they arrived during a wind storm so anchoring (which required motoring in forward gear against the wind) was barely possible. The incentives are high though and anchoring was successful. Then Chris spent about 3 days working nearly non-stop to resolve the problem. Eventually he found a piece of the starter that was gumming up the works and a failed seal on the side of the transmission. He has also found a replacement transmission but maybe the problem can be solved without a complete replacement. The repair continues. He got it fixed enough to get into the marina where Seth and Kirk (their kids) have managed an invitation to tour one of the superyachts. Their lives are interesting but Chris has to be a superman to keep it all going.
I've posted some pictures under Papeete in the gallery.