Power to the boat stops.
26 October 2014 | Admiral Marina, Port Dickson, Malaysia
Sunny and hot with a small sprinkle thrown in.
Well the day started out just fine till the power stopped coming on board the boat. I had just put a cup of water in the microwave to heat it up for Tracy's tea and hit the "start" button when suddenly the power just died. Nothing--no power inside and the AC stopped too. The circuit to the boat was dead. I headed for the marina office talking to a couple of other boats on the dock and they had power. HMMM? I let the marina know we had no power and headed back to Zephyr. With Tracy on deck feeding out more electric cable, I tried the plug next door. Nope--nothing. Tried the plug on the opposite side of Zephyr and still no power. Tracy handed out my volt meter and I tried the outlet box that the 220 volts comes in on from the power post on the dock. The box was dead. No power going to it. I grabbed a screwdriver after turning off the power at the dock and unscrewed the box. One of the wires had come off it's screw. A simple fix. Straighten the wires and put them under their screws in the box and tighten the screws. We were back in business!! A simple fix but have no idea how the wire came loose as the box was just sitting in the cockpit with no one around to move it and knock the wires loose. Oh well. Problem solved.
We've had a problem with an oil leak on the engine. We thought we had fixed it back in Puteri when we found two of the hoses that carry oil to the oil filter showed signs of leaks. One was actually cracked when we removed it. With both replaced, we thought the problem was solved. Once we had power, we headed back into the engine room. When Mr. Tan the electrician was here, I had to move the oil absorber pads around and pull them out only to find some quite soaked with oil. Rats!! Well this morning we went exploring around the engine room looking for the leak. We saw a few places where the engine looked we so we cleaned them off and after cleaning the floor of the engine room of the old oil, we put down fresh clean pads. We also cut other pads down and put then around the areas where we think the oil is leaking. The next time we run the engine, it should give us a better idea where it's actually coming from. We've become "oil detectives".
In the after noon, we took the shuttle to town and did more grocery shopping. Fresh veggies and some fruits along with some soft drinks. Cheapest prices we have seen for Cokes and Pepsis in quite a while. The van came back and picked us up and back to the marina we came with even more food to store away on our boat. We have more food on board than some of the smaller grocery stores we have visited as we crossed the Pacific Ocean.
Tonight, after nice showers to get the sweat off, a quiet time on board watching the news and a few shows we had downloaded this morning. Internet here is dreadfully slow. Not a lot better than the old dial up. I've seen 3G, and even 2G, but this isn't that far down the alphabet. There is no "G" any where near the internet here at the marina. I tried downloading the NBC news on Itunes and it was going to take 3 hours for a 23 minute show. At least with our internet dongle in the computer we can still get shows but with a limit of just 10 gig of use before having to add more gigs to the service, it can get expensive. We sure do love our shows though and it really helps us relax during the evening.