El Diablo is Dead
29 March 2011 | Z town
Hot
El Diablo is dead. The Honda generator I bought last July, had repaired in Catalina and San Diego is now a box of parts in a little shop in Mexico.
This is a specially built generator with an outlet for plugging shore power directly into the unit (Shore power has a special plug)
However ,we were able to purchase a new Honda generator used in construction sites. We went to the hardware store bought a few items, cut a piece of an extension cord a built a pig tail to fit my shore power. We picked up the unit this morning and had it making power this afternoon. Simple right, riiiiiiiiiiiight!
The store we were buying it at, could not take credit cards so we needed 12000 pesos cash. No Problema we called Bank of America and had our daily limit raised. However they said we would have to go inside
We followed instructions waited an hour and half in line and were told by the Mexican bank that we could only used the ATM. That limit is 3000 pesos
Then we went to three more banks and were able to get 3000 more on an advance. The 4th bank said we could get an advance if we had our passport which we did not. So we visited our new genny said good night and returned the next day to get more money. This only took two banks (the first was out of money) and then we went off to pick up our new generator, come back to the boat modify an extension cord to make it work and voila we have generating power.
Oh however, if you look at the picture you will see it is in a tube frame which prevents it from being stored any where on the boat, soooooo 15 minutes with a hacksaw and we now have "custom" generator which fits in the cockpit locker as before. So you see life is simply relaxing in the sunshine.
Tomorrow we head off to Acapulco and points south trying to catch our new cruising friends. Thanks to Kokomo for waiting patiently with us while we fixed the engine and the generator.