The last 24 hours has been interesting. We started the day with a wash which meant running the generator. We turned on the water maker to catch up on the recent water used and that from the wash. Not long after running the water maker the circuit breaker tripped. It’s done this a few times since we repaired our last problem but always ran ok when the breaker was reset and the water maker restarted. With no other apparent issues I put this down to an over sensitive breaker. This time however the (original) motor connected to the recently replaced feeder pump started losing power and the pressure dropped out of the pump. Not good.
This was the beginning of a day of troubleshooting. The basic question was were we still being plagued by a problem which caused our original pump failure or are we seeing a problem that was created as a result of previously running the system with a blockage. Throughout the day I checked as much as I could, changed all the filters (again), checked and checked but the water maker persisted in only running well for about 5 minutes at a time – barely enough to replace the initial fresh water rinse it performs on start up.
I have a favoured hypothesis as to what the problem is. I suspect (but am not sure) that we damaged the motor at the same time as the pump assembly. Specifically I think it overheated and fused some of the coils. Until recently, when starting cold with the lowest resistance it soon trips the circuit breaker. Once warmed up the resistance was high enough to prevent tripping the breaker and the damage slight enough not to be noticed. I further wonder if running the water maker while charging, which resulted in a higher voltage than normal, running through the pump caused further damage and now the motor is close to death. I really want to be sure about this as this will now mean shipping out a new motor to us. Regardless, we’re now back to rationing our fresh water. Fortunately we still have some water from the Marquesas but not a lot. We have a full tank and a bit on board so we should be ok for a while.
On the up side, during the morning John and Lucy from Tyee (last seen in Las Perlas Islands, Panama) came by. They’re anchored about 1/2 a mile away and we hadn’t realized until now. It was great to see them. John invited us out to play with his array of kite boards which John and I agreed to do after lunch.
Before lunch we all went off snorkeling nearby where there was a lot more coral in shallow water. It was great swimming amongst the coral in the clear water. We all spotted a large grouper and Helen spied a black tipped reef shark – a small one so she had the thrill of seeing a shark close by in the water without the fear of being eaten.
After lunch and some more faffing around with the water maker John and I headed over to Tyee to see what we could learn about kite boarding. As we had no experience at all we were shown the practice kite which we played with for about 2 hours standing in a shallow reef. This skill has to be acquired long before trying to use the force of the kite to go surfing on the board. While we were there Kamaya showed up. This pleased the Tyee kids no end as they’d been without friends their size for a while. Tim was soon out on his kite board racing John out on the lagoon showing John and I what could be done with a lot of practice.
Back on Dignity we settled down for an early evening. I found it difficult to get to sleep worrying about the water maker. When I finally slept it was fitfully as we ended up with a night of thunderstorms. Laptops and hand held VHFs/GPS went into the microwave. Occasionally I would check. Around 1am I was woken by VHF chatter from Bristol Rose out at sea being pounded. Helen woke me early when we were in 40 knot winds. I called Bristol Rose to see if they were ok and while chatting our anchor popped and we were dragging. We quickly let out more chain and ended up stuck fast 0.2nm away from where we were anchored.
We learned that Fine Gold, nearby, had popped their anchor a few hours earlier and had ended up a mile away in very shallow water before getting back under control. They’re now anchored further away where they’re better sheltered from the wind. When things subside we may well join them as we’re too far out from the protection of the land for comfort.
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