Things that go BANG in the Night
13 January 2010 | Georgetown, Exumas
Carl
We've come to understand that the difference between an experienced cruiser and a novice is that the novice lives in fear something will break while the vet knows things will break and prepares for it. The other night in some high winds Carrie and I were awoken by a loud bang and then the knocking sound of the wind generator. While we ran to the cockpit we feared the worst, that the wind generator had come apart and was now destroying the solar panel or the canvas bimini. Fortunately the generator was still turning and had not come apart but something was still wrong so we stopped and tied it off until morning when a full inspection could assess the damage. It's times like this when you wonder two things: "Can we fix it?" and if not, "can we do without it?". Luckily what we found was in the picture above, that the Wind Brake, a safety device designed to protect the device from damage in extremely (> 55 kts) winds had broken. We removed the device and found the generator still working like a champ (touch wood). We found out later from a fellow cruiser with extensive experience in this model that he removed his Wind Brakes long ago, believing they were useless. It took a while to get back to sleep that night but the end result was a good as we could have hoped for.