Turning Lemons into Lemonaide

For a while ye ol generator has been running hot, I worked on it over and over, sometimes with brief success, just enough to tease. So here I am with five of the loveliest ladies on board, the most international crew to date and a cranky gen. The idea of limited water and no air fills was really getting to me, top it off with a touch of a cold—yes you can get the sniffles even in paradise. So my usual always positive pose was taking a few hits, maybe why I got the cold in the first place, negativity takes its toll.

We finished two dives; I filled one tank and the gen over heated, damn. I thought I was out of options on my limited ability to fix it. We dropped the hook for the night in one of my favorite anchorages on the north end of Komodo Island and I pondered the dim future. There was a livaboard dive boat next to us having a party it seemed. We decided that a boat load of bikini clad girls and one guitar player ought to be able to get a few tanks filled so off we went.

We were cordially welcomed aboard and found a large group of Indonesians from Jakarta had charted the boat. They had a ukulele and a small guitar and were singing some local folk songs. I broke out my guitar and did a rousing rendition of Johnny B Goode, and had them all dancing and howling. I joined the one really pretty good guitar player they had and we played for quite a while. They showed my crew a local line dance—similar to a country western one I have seen so line dancing is universal. Pelin dazzled them with her Turkish belly dancing. 

We danced and played until sundown, all having a wonderful time. They said it was time for them to prepare for a night dive and we bid our new friends farewell, loaded our four full tanks and headed back to Furthur.

It has been said that more problems are solved while sleeping than awake. A good friend told me that he believed the IRS lost more money at three AM than any other time, when the solutions to problems come about. I hit the bunk early and sure enough bolted up at three thinking there was one section of the raw water flow I had not tested. The part that goes above the engine to the anti-syphon might be blocked by old impellor bits.

I rose early and drank a couple cups of coffee planning my next move. I removed both ends of the loop and blew on one, low tech for sure. Sure enough there was great resistance. I pondered the system and wondered why I need this convoluted system at all, there is no chance of syphoning sea water as the impellor would stop such a flow. To test the theory I removed the hose at the top of the raw water pump and no water sprung forth. Not sure if I had this right I decided to experiment and connected a short piece of the appropriate sized garden hose (glad I kept that scrap of hose now) bypassing the anti-syphon loop and going direct from the raw water pump to the heat exchanger. Fired her up, prayed to Allah, Buddha, Kishna and all, and peered off the stern to see those wonderful small bubbles showing strong water flow. Yahoo!! I loaded the gen up with the water maker and watched as the temperature rose to just under 180F and stopped, the exact results I had hoped for. I ran the gen for more than an hour of blissful coolness and declared victory. I did discover that the loop is necessary and will clean it out and replace it soon. If the gen had not failed we would have not met the nice people and missed a great party,

So we head out today with the great party, new friends, and a simple solution to a problem I had blown out to be life threatening and stressed on for days. Once again faith in my journey and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle maintenance ruled over negative thinking and worry.