Sequitur

On Saturday the 20th of November I ran the engine without installing the drive belt for the Balmar 210 alternator. I had decided to hedge my bets and bring the house bank up to a higher state of charge before going live with my new alternator installation. This would provide a larger reserve of power should anything go wrong. I continued also to try to determine why the existing alternator has not been able to take the start batteries above 12.45 volts.


In the afternoon the final race of the J24 2010 South American Championships was held, and we watched from the cockpit. Hawky from Brazil won the Championship, followed by Peru's Scaramoush in second and Itau from Chile in third. Also racing at the same time was a large fleet of Optimists.


For dinner on Saturday evening I prepared bratwurst with parboiled then grilled comote accompanied by butter-sweated red and green peppers and quartered criminis. With it we enjoyed a Trivento Tribu 2009 Malbec from Argentina's Mendoza. It far surpassed the quality we had expected for its $7.09 cost, and it has been added to our buy list.

On Sunday morning I again ran the engine without belting the second alternator, bringing the bank back up from the depletions of the previous day and night and feeding breakfast's heavy demand from the coffee maker and toaster. After breakfast I again ran through all of my connections, and traced all of the circuits. I also re-read the installation manuals for the alternator and the regulator, and thumbed-through the appropriate sections of Nigel Calder's "Boatowner's Mechanical and Electrical Manual".


By the time I had satisfied myself that everything was correctly done, Edi had prepared lunch. I welcomed the excuse to delay the inevitable. We sat down to some marvellous potato bunwitches of sliced leftover Bavarian bratwurst, Peruvian avocadoes, Danish blue from Costco in Vancouver, artichoke hearts from Costco in Acapulco and Moroccan olives from the Parthenon Deli in Kitsilano, accompanied by cups of South African Rooibos tea.


After our delicious international lunch, I could think of no more excuses to delay trialing the new alternator. I put the belt on the pulleys and tensioned it with the convenient turnbuckle, then I flashed-up the engine and made the switches to all three batteries. Nothing exploded. There were no zapping arcs. There were no weird sounds or smells. The meters showed a charge of just over 80 amps at engine idle. I ran the engine up to a fast idle at 1100 rpm and watched as the ammeter climbed to over 150 amps. I smiled.

I ran the engine for an hour, closely monitoring the alternator, the cycling LEDs on the regulator and watched the ammeter, voltmeter and state-of-charge readings on the panel at the nav station. I also used the multi-meter to monitor the voltages of the house bank and of the two start batteries. For the first time since our generator quit, we were taking the start batteries above 12.45 volts. I watched as their charge rose over the hour to 12.9 volts, and confirmed that I had programmed the regulator properly.


For Sunday evening's dinner I put some skinless and boneless chicken thighs in the wok with a few drops of sesame oil and tore them into small pieces as they cooked. I set the chicken aside and into the juices and rendered fat in the wok, I added quartered criminis, diced ginger and garlic, sliced red onions and celery and later, some chunked red and green peppers. I built a sauce in the wok with a splash of light soy, a sprinkle of rice flour, a dab of oyster sauce and a slosh of boiling water from the pasta pot. I then added back in the chicken, added the hot rotini, sprinkled with freshly toasted sesame seeds and tossed. We made it a celebratory dinner in honour of my getting the second alternator working; we enjoyed glasses of Cava Frexinet Cordon Negro.


We continued the celebration with glasses of Pisco Soldeica from Vista Alegre, accompanied by chunks of dark chocolate.

On Monday morning I again ran the engine at 1100 rpm to charge the house bank. The two battery monitors we have installed at the nav station are both showing erroneous State-of-Charge readings, resulting from the DC power having been switched off to safely connect the 3/0 cables to the system. The Xantrex LinkPro showed a flashing "synchronize", indicating the bank needed to be brought to a fully charged state and then the LinkPro manually synchronized. The Magnum inverter remote showed "Think'n", indicating that it still needed to sense the bank in a fully charged state before it could begin to calculate.

After an hour and a half of running, the charge ramped down from the 160 amp range to about 70 amps, as the regulator switched to the absorption phase. At two hours, with the battery accepting 13.5 volts, I shut-down the engine and watched the house bank settle to 12.65 volts, just shy of fully charged. I decided to leave it there for the day.

On Tuesday morning I ran the engine at 1600 rpm and watched as the alternators put 220 amps into the system, bulk charging for about 40 minutes, before ramping down to absorption. I watched as the toaster and coffee maker drew from the inverter and the regulator upped the charge rate to compensate. It appears we have the systems set-up and talking with each other nicely.


It was finally warm enough to have lunch outside in the cockpit, although we still needed the side curtains down. We enjoyed hot paninis.


As we lunched, we watched our neighbour, Herb working with two men trying again to fit a new awning above the fly-bridge of The Lady J. They had first begun working on it over two months ago, and the process seems to have taken-on a life of its own. Every now and then another fitting happens; we thought this might possibly be the final fitting. However, later as I was waiting for a launch ashore to fetch two more jerry cans of water, I noticed that the awning was gone again.

I have continued to keep in close communication by email with Luis on the purchase of the new dinghy and motor. Our inflation and orientation session, and the test run were originally scheduled for Tuesday, but by Monday it had slipped to Wednesday. Then on Tuesday evening, it slipped to Thursday morning.

On Wednesday morning I ran the engine at 1800 rpm and was pleased with how well the charging systems were operating. I spent some time looking further into travel arrangements for our trip to Cuzco and Machu Picchu. The previous week we had found that LAN Peru, the "national air carrier" of Peru charges triple fare for foreigners, and a flight from Lima to Cuzco return would cost us just over $1,200. We were left with the uncomfortable thoughts of a 21-hour bus ride. After further digging I found that Peruvian Airlines does not discriminate against foreigners, and we could fly to Cuzco for $169 each return. I started looking for the availability of accommodation to plan a time to travel. Fortunately, this is the beginning of the 'low season', and both availability and prices are good.


Mid morning we took a launch ashore to catch a bus to Plaza San Miguel to, among other things look for a branch of Interbank, where I could find the easiest way to arrange payment to Luis for the dinghy and motor. On the launch ride in, we again spoke with Eugenio, who was shuttling between a couple of his boats. He had told us the previous day of Ricardo, a stainless steel fabricator, when we had inquired, and this morning he told us Ricardo was working on Madagascar in the Club boatyard. We looked for him, but nobody had seen him yet, but we were told he should be there soon.

We continued on to San Miguel, had a couple of frustrating meetings in a couple of banks, and then so as to not totally waste the trip, we picked-up a few things that we needed at Tottus and Sodimac. On our way back we again stopped in the Club's boatyard to see if Ricardo had arrived. I saw him, and we chatted briefly in his non-English and my non-Spanish, from which I gathered he was busy for another hour or two, and then could see me. A couple of hours later, while on a run ashore for water, I found him again in the boatyard, and showed him a drawing I had made of an outboard motor rack that I wanted built, and wanted him to give me a quote. We arranged for him to come out to Sequitur at 1000 on Thursday morning.


As we were waiting for a launch to take us back out to Sequitur, we watched two "tour boats" motor past the Club pier. On most days we have seen various types of these, from small three-to-four-person rowing punts to converted lifeboats. All seem to be filled to beyond safe capacity with tourists dressed in life jackets. They wend their way through the moored boats, which seem to be one of the highlights of the tour.

On Thursday morning we waited onboard for our meeting with Ricardo at 1000, and when by 1030 he hadn't arrived, we called a launch and went ashore. Edi went off in one direction on errands, and I went the other. I looked without luck for Ricardo in the yard, and then I continued on along the malecon for four blocks to the Club Universitario de Regatas to meet with Luis.


Luis ran through a short introductory course on the new Tohatsu 18hp two-stroke outboard, which he had mounted on the transom of his inflatable on its trailer on the pier. We did start and stop procedures, performed a fresh water flush, and covered the basic care and maintenance points. We unrolled the new Sea Rider 2.6 inflatable and I inspected the modifications that I had ordered. Everything was in order and the work looked very professional. Now that everything was ready for delivery, I delayed the acceptance until we had installed on Sequitur's stern a rack and locking arrangements for the outboard.


As I walked back to the pier, I again stopped at the boatyard to look for Ricardo, but still could not find him. In the mid-afternoon, Eugenio arrived off our stern in a launch, and with him was Jaime, another stainless fabricator. With Eugenio translating, we discussed my plans for the motor rack, took more measurements, and modified the plans. Jaime calculated a quote, and saying he was very busy with contracts at the moment, gave a completion date of not before 10 December. I told him we would be sailing toward Chile before then. He wouldn't budge on timing. We wouldn't delay our departure from Peru any longer. He relented. The completion is scheduled for the beginning of December.