Maintaining you boat in exotic places

Our little stay in Green Turtle gave me a chance to resurrect the generator.  I turned out that it had a number of electrical problems (a high temperature cut-out switch, an internal relay and one major power junction) that were probably a result of having being exposed to a salt fog from water escaping from the faulty exhaust elbow last season and then being exposed to the heat and humidity of Florida over the summer.  Once I found and eliminated all of these, the generator started and ran better than ever - at least for a short time.  Then it sprung a leak around the thermostat housing, flooding the area with lots of steam.  For a few moments, until we knew that we were dealing with steam and not smoke, it was more than a little scary.  Replacing the lost anti-freeze and tightening a few bolts solved the issue, however.

We also used the time in Green Turtle to resurrect the fly-bridge depth sounder.  It seemed that I had simply plugged two halves of a multi-pin cable together incorrectly.  To look at it, you would not think this was possible but I guess it was.

Once we reached Treasure Cay, I was faced with the task of cleaning the diesel out of the bilges.  What do you do with several gallons of sea-water contaminated diesel once you suck it out of the bottom of the boat?  I use the verb suck since a shop-vac was the best way of skimming it off the surface.  Lucky for us, one of the families we met at Treasure Cay had bought a property lot and was clearing it of bush.  Dirty diesel was useful to them to help burn the brush piles.  We were happy to get rid of it and they were happy to have access to our dirty diesel - truly a win-win situation. 

When we first fired up out dingy, the outboard ran very poorly.  Now that it has had a few tanks of fuel flushed through it, it runs much better.  Notwithstanding that it had lots of Stabil added to the fuel and then was run dry before storage, I think the carburetor had some gum in it.  It is not often that mechanical problems fix themselves so I guess I should be grateful.

I find that even now, I am still learning the boat and its systems.  And I am still doing the occasional bone-head trick.  Just the other day, now that we had clean bilges, I failed to screw the dip stick on the generator properly into its hole.  As a result, it shook loose, allowing 2 quarts of oil to be blown out and into the bilge.  Yuck!!  Now bilge cleaning can start all over.

Anyway, (touch wood) the boat seems to be running well and I continue to gain confidence in it.  While I do not claim to be truly mechanically competent (sometimes I create more problems than I solve), I continue to be boggled by people who set out to live this lifestyle in spite of no mechanical competence whatsoever.