Wow what a trip! We were troubleshooting one sometimes two issues a day for about the first ten days. Because all of the boat projects took so long to complete, we did not have time to run the boat through it's paces to make sure everything was going to work as expected. Although, a couple of the problems happened in the days preceding our departure: the engine starter quit working. Fortunately we were able to get it rebuilt and reinstalled in one day. However, for safety sake we ordered a new one to add to our growing inventory of spare parts. On the first night, after we had finally moved aboard, the water pump was turned on for the first time since having the thru-hulls replaced. Unfortunately, three of the five faucets were left in the on position. I caught two of the three. By the time, I caught the last one we had six inches of standing water in the forward bathroom because the new drain hose for the sink was plugged up. We darn near drain an entire tank of water! We were able to get most of the water out by turning on the shower drain pump. After three days of using our wonderful new toilet in the forward head, we began to notice things were starting to get really stinky in there. Upon first inspection we could not figure what was going on. It was just by chance that the light from the hatch above picked up the slightest glistening of moisture the next day through an open inspection port. The elbow joint at the bottom of the holding tank was failing and the holding tank was leaking, oh uck! We drained most of another tank of water flushing the bilge! Fortunately, we have three 57-gallon water tanks on board.
On December 28th we had to just put our tools away and head for St. Thomas in the USVI. Our friends Bob and Leslie had arrived on the 25th to join us for a three week cruise and we had to pick them up. As we got ready to leave the dock, we asked new friends Captain Paul and Susan aboard s/v Nomad to help with the lines. Captain Paul, concerned for our safety, first asked if we had checked the weather. Of course, in our rush to finish and get out we had not taken the time to find out the winds were out of the east at 12-15 knots and the seas were 4-5 feet. Then he insisted we could not possibly make the 38 mile crossing with the dinghy suspended from the arch they way we had it. So as our 8:00 departure turned into an 11:00 departure, we dutifully followed Captain Paul's instructions and lowered dinghy, removed the outboard and mounted it to the rail, then reposition the dinghy so it was sitting on it's side on the swim platform - no small feat! Finally, with the wind square on the nose, we motored to St. Thomas; all the while worrying about how we were ever going to get our monster of an outboard on the dinghy again.
No one likes to have problems, but you especially do not want to have problems with guests on board! After picking up Bob and Leslie, two problems popped up quickly - the house batteries were not charging and the refrigerator started flashing an error message.
After checking everything we could think of, we could not figure out why the house batteries were not charging. Luckily we had brand new jumper cables on board (from the starter motor incident) and we able to temporarily keep them charged by jumping to the starter battery as we got our butts in gear and finished the installation of the solar panels.
To fix the problem with the refrigerator we needed to understand what the error code was, so Barry called the manufacturer. The error code indicated the temperature probes (or sensors), there are two, had failed. With no spare probes on board we had to find a work around for the problem. It turns out that if you reverse the wires on the back of the control panel, the refrigerator will work, but you can not control the temperature. For the next three weeks we turned the fridge off in the morning and on at bedtime. This worked pretty well, even if it was a pain in the butt. There was only two casualties of the process, we exploded a can of diet Coke and killed a head of lettuce by freezing it to death!
Even with the solar panels now up and running, we still could not keep the house batteries charged, so we decided it was time to install the wind generator. This was not going to be a complex project, wind generator are pretty basic, but it was going to be a bit tricky mounting it on top of the arch. The wind generator is mounted on top of a four foot pipe that goes into a sleeve on top of the arch, the whole assembly was very top heavy as the WG weighed about twenty pounds. To complicate things, we were doing this while on a mooring ball in a very rolly bay with about 12-15 knots of wind. After Barry and Bob got it muscled into place, I was the designated monkey elected to climb up on the arch to attach the nose cone and blades - all the while, worrying about losing a limb or being decapitated if the wind caught the blades and started it spinning! Now that we had all of this free energy to charge the house batteries, we discovered that we could not charge the batteries with the engine. This new problem was going to require a trip to Conch Charters as they installed the new bank of house batteries for us. We were going to stop in to see the Conch gang anyway to pick up a liferaft and have the guy who installed the new refrigeration systems look at another problem with the system, it appeared as if salt water was leaking into the compressors.
I could go on and on, but the details are not that interesting for the rest of the problems. It is worth noting, again, that all of the things in this post happened in the first ten days. The following is a summary of most of the rest of the issues. The new dinghy outboard motor had problems starting and running when first used at Francis Bay on St. John. It turned out the manufacturer only put enough oil in to fool you into thinking it had oil! Then it refused to start entirely in some difficult situations over the next few days. Barry finally figured out a starting sequence that made it happy, now it starts on the second pull. In rough and rolling seas off Great Lameshur Bay on St. John, the boat engine cut out and would not start again -- very scary! After awhile the engine did we start. We replaced the fuel filter that was not very dirty and we are still not sure what that source of the problem was. The refrigeration filter and o-ring had to be replaced when both the freezer and fridge quit working at Crown Bay Marina on St. Thomas, the cause looked to be excessive corrosion. The anchor bolts for the arch loosened up (as expected) and while tightening them up I managed to shear one screw completely off. Who knew I was so strong - especially while upside down, nearly standing on my head to get to them! That was a particularly tense situation as it was the leg in tension and we could not use the same path to replace the bolt. Then we sliced a hole in the bow of the dinghy with davit blocks, that was a two day repair. Figuring out how to secure the dinghy when suspended has had the biggest learning curve of all! We almost lost a fender while at the dock getting water, Barry does not want to start using the watermaker until we start down island. Our engine starter battery died - a sudden and painful death (at least for us) on a Saturday. Luckily for us the good people at Golden Hind Chandlery stayed open late so we could get there and get a new battery. While at Sopher's Hole Marina replacing the battery we lost a fender. This has prompted a new rule on Smart Move, all guests, potential crew and the captain must prove knot tying proficiency before being allowed to work the deck. The new rule will be enforced by me - the Deck Boss!
Our problems seemed to mostly end with a trip to Conch Charters. It was their with the help of one of the repair guys that we realized the reason we were not able to keep the house batteries charged was that Barry has missed reattaching one of the wires to the second alternator when he installed our rebuilt starter. While we felt kind of dumb, it was a relief to have the problem resolved. While at Conch, we also met with the guy who installed the new refrigeration/freezer system, he called himself Dr. Ice. There were large amount of salt precipitating out around the both of the condensers and the condenser housings were starting to corrode. In addition, there was a lot of icky stuff accumulating in the hoses. Well, Dr. Ice acknowledged we had a serious problem. He said he had never seen a problem like that before. He suggested WE should replace all of the hoses and hose clamps and make sure everything was tight because it appeared that salt water was leaking into the condensers. Then charged us $42!