Potential Good News, Bad News
23 March 2017 | Fantasy Island Marina Roatan, Honduras
Susan / a beautiful sunny day, breezy, 80 degrees F
We decide to go ahead and pick-up the reserved rental car to do the errands we planned to do tomorrow while Joel & Misti relax & unwind on the resort beach and snorkel this area. The process of turning that reservation into an actual car takes 50 minutes at the airport. And we were first in line! From the airport we drive to West Bay - changing a flat tire along the way - just to do something different. Jerry smiles & says "it's nice to have a day of no boat projects, barograph tasks, software projects, tax prep & paperwork". We explore a bit then enjoy an excellent lunch at Hangover Hut. It's not far from the beach we walk mid-mornings when we're at West End. We'll be back: beach walk, lunch, beach walk back sounds like a plan if only we can get out of the marina & back to the West End. While waiting for our food we discuss options for getting the needed part if Joel isn't able to make it down. Jerry sends a text to Joel to get his status. Within a few minutes he gets a text back saying that they're in Seattle expecting to get Misti's renewed passport and are planning to catch tonight's red-eye to Houston. Good news!
We get back to Vida Dulce around 3:30pm. Jerry turns on the watermaker; we need full tanks for their arrival. Uh Oh, Problem. It's been working just fine; in fact we made water yesterday. A day without boat projects just went down the drain. To get at the watermaker, we have to move everything from the "garage" / forward port cabin to the guest suite; the freshly cleaned, bed made, etc. for Joel & Misti's arrival guest suite. Not crowding them out shortly after arrival is the silver lining to their delay. Jerry tests. He reads the manual, and tests some more. He calls Spectra technical support. They give him some additional things to test / try. At first it seems like it could be the feed pump, the one we had repaired in Cuba. This is a fairly large heavy piece of equipment; too heavy to air-ship down without breaking the bank. If this is the problem, Bad News. More testing reveals that the boost pump isn’t getting any voltage. Jerry calls technical support back with this update and is given a set of updated suggestions / options. He continues testing. One test reverses the voltage finding; the boost pump is getting voltage but not working. He calls technical support again however they’re now closed for the day. He’ll start on this again tomorrow morning.
We can work around the genset problems with marina shore power until we get the needed part. The water-making problem is trickier as there is no potable water available at this marina. Even the Tiki Palapa shower is straight salt water from bay. Potable water is delivered by a water truck.
For now we'll stick with the potential good news, Joel & Misti's planned arrival tomorrow.