Thompson's Bay, Long Island

The front that passed us today did little but cause a wind shift. It did cloud up in the afternoon and the bay got choppy as the wind shifted and left us exposed, but all in all, it was a non event.

I spent the morning working on our alternator bracket. "Sapphire" has two alternators. One provides electricity to the engine battery. The second sends electricity to our house bank of batteries. I think that I mentioned a few weeks ago that the bracket that holds the house bank alternator was loose. I wired it in place and it worked, but it was a short term fix at best.

After removing the alternator this morning, the bracket fell out. It was supposed to be bolted to the engine block with two bolts. What I found was that one of the bolts had broken off which created enough tension that the portion of the bracket with the other bolt had broken off and that a small corner of the bracket was all that was bolted to the engine. Getting that off was no problem. The issue was the broken bolt in the engine block.

Steve had a right-angle drill that would work and I had a small easy out so I went to work drilling a hole in bolt. I sprayed it with penetrating oil and got the esay-out started but as I added some pressure it broke. I drilled another hole and attempted to use the broken off easy-out but couldn't make it budge.

At this point I got cleaned up a little and took the dinghy to shore. (Which was an adventure in itself because the dinghy dock area was like a washing machine with waves coming from the west rebounding off the rocks behind) Anyway I got tied up and walked to Fox Auto where I dropped off the bracket to be welded. I also asked where I might be able to find and easy-out big enough to do the job and was told that my best bet was the only car parts store on the island 12 miles away. Since we're renting a car tomorrow, we'll make that a stop.

By the time I got back to the boat it was well passed lunch time so we had some leftovers and spent most of the afternoon reading. At about four we to took the dinghy over to a small Tiki Bar called Parrots of the Caribbean with Kim and Steve for a beer. The place wasn't actually open on Tuesdays, but the owner's brother was there talking to a Canadian family whom he'd met on his flight down. He was very pleasant and we spent a couple of hours talking with them before heading back to make some supper.