Sequitur

On Sunday the 29th of May we celebrated Edi's birthday quietly onboard Sequitur. We were still alongside a float at the Alwoplast marina on the Valdivia River in southern Chile. The weather continued cold and very wet, but we were warmed by a birthday card from Annelies. We assumed that she had a bit of assistance in composing it on her iPad.

Work on Sequitur had ground to a halt as we waited for parts to arrive. As wonderful as the technicians and workers are here, they are severely hampered with parts procurement problems, being near the end of the world. We spent most of our time inside, hunkered-down and trying to stay warm. Thankfully, Sequitur continues to be a perfectly dry boat, with no leaky hatches, windows or portlights.


A week later, on Sunday the 5th of June the rain had stopped and the clearing sky prompted us to venture into town for grocery shopping. We returned under rather blue skies, just in time to wave bon voyage to Jonathan, the German catamaran that had just completed her repairs at Alwoplast. She was off to Tahiti on the continuation of her circumnavigation.


As Jonathan motored out, we saw that the sky had cleared sufficiently to afford us a view of the erupting Puyehue-Cordon Caulle volcano upriver to the southeast. Even at 130 kilometres distance, the 10,000 metre-high ash plume was impressive. Fortunately, the prevailing winds and local weather pattern mean that none of the ash will come anywhere near us.

On Monday night we were hit with 30-knot winds, violent gusts and torrential downpours, and the whole Valdivia area was hit by a power outage. We awoke on Tuesday morning to a cold cabin; the igniter for our Espar diesel furnace is still in transit from Germany, and without electricity, our electric heaters were useless. Fortunately, the battery had been full when the outage began, and it was still at 96% after inverting power for our breakfast's coffeemaker and bagel toaster demand. Not knowing how long the power might be out, we decided against using the inverter to power the heaters, so we put on a few extra layers of clothing.

By mid-morning Ronald had hooked-up some temporary cables from the factory's emergency generator to the floats, and we had shore-power again. I turned on our heaters and blew the circuit. Ronald made-up and installed a heavier breaker, and we were once again warming. The regional power grid was on and off through the day and evening as the storm continued with severe gusts, heavy lightning, thunder and hail. The Alwoplast generator automatically switched-on a few seconds after each outage and we saw only tiny pauses in our power. To speed the cabin warming, we baked bagels and bread.

The next morning we read in the online news: "An unusual storm bringing hurricane-force winds, heavy rain and hail has damaged more than 100 homes in a Chilean lake resort. Emergency officials were already dealing with a volcanic eruption in the region." Looking further I found that in Villarrica, 115km northeast of Sequitur, the winds blew at nearly 200 kph, the equivalent of a Category 3 hurricane, ripping off many roofs. Although there is no record of any previous tornadoes, Chile's meteorology centre said Tuesday's storm was a strange one that had some characteristics of a tornado. It wasn't quite that windy at Alwoplast.


On Wednesday morning, the mechanics arrived with the cleaned and tested injectors for the engine. They reinstalled them, adjusted the valves, changed the oil and replaced the fuel and oil filters. The engine's 2000 hour routine maintenance was completed, and it was awaiting only the arrival of the new raw water pump to be ready to flash-up.


Late on Wednesday afternoon Ronald brought the new raw water pump onboard. He said that it had just arrived from the Yanmar distributor in Santiago, and that the mechanics would install it the next morning.

Sure enough, first thing Thursday morning, the one month anniversary of our arrival at Alwoplast, the mechanics were back onboard to install the pump and to remount the alternators. Then Hector arrived to reconnect the wiring and the engine was ready to start. I turned the key and there was silence. The starter did not turn. Was it a stuck solenoid? Was it something else?


Hector dived into the engine compartment and with the aid of a flashlight quickly found heavy corrosion on the starter's electrical contacts, most likely caused by the spray from the raw water pump leak. Unfortunately, the starter is buried under the supercharger, and the latter will need to come off to gain access. Hector went ashore to report this arising to Ronald and to get the mechanics back from town to remove supercharger.


Mid-afternoon the mechanics were back onboard to removed supercharger and the starter.


There was heavy corrosion on the terminals, plus some on the casing, and Hector took it up to the shop to clean and overhaul.


At 1725 Hector returned with a cleaned-up and bench-tested starter. Since it was already very late in the day, he told us he would be back to continue manana.


Shortly before 0900 on Friday Hector arrived to continue. He installed the starter and then overhauled all of the electrical connections in engine room. Shortly after 1000 Ronald arrived with the new Balmar 120 alternator, which has just arrived from Seattle. Hector exchanged free-wheeling burned-out one with the new one and hooked it up to the regulator.


As he was finishing, the mechanics arrived with the rebuilt Fischer-Panda generator and with the assistance of a couple of workers from the boatbuilding shop, manhandled it onboard. Once the generator was in the cockpit, they set to work reinstalling the turbocharger on the engine and ensuring that it was once again ready to start. It flashed-up on the first turn and ran smoothly, quietly and smoke-free.

When we had installed the new Balmar 120 alternator in the Galapagos, we had used the existing Balmar regulator. I now suspect that it was the cause of the two burned-out alternators. I had ordered a pair of MC-614 Max Charge regulators from Balmar when we were in Las Hadas, Mexico, but had used only one of them, the one on the 210 amp unit. The second new regulator was still a spare, and I wanted to replace the old ARS-4 regulator on the 120 with it. Among other things, it has battery and alternator temperature sensors and associated damage-control programming.


Hector and Ronald went to work sorting-out the wiring while I shut off the shore power and switched on the inverter with the electric heaters as a load. The 160 to 180 amp draw from the heaters soon had the battery nudging down, and in twenty minutes it was down below 96%. This gave capacity into which the alternators could charge, and allowed us to take some useful readings. Satisfied, Ronald went back to his other duties, and Hector completed the installation and set-up of the new regulator and the temperature sensors. Everything was now ready for the installation of the generator, but by this time it was past quitting time, so we resigned ourselves to waiting until Monday.


To console ourselves, we enjoyed the dryness and relative warmth of Sequitur as the storm intensified outside. Our view out the cabin windows and across the Valdivia River hasn't changed much the past few days; however, the weather forecast looked promising, calling for light rain showers on Saturday and then a mix of sun and cloud for Sunday.