Keeping the House in Order
Sint Maarten is a great place to do boat work, so we tackled a number of our higher priority items while we were there, beginning with….
The Generator
When we bought Matriarch, one of the many selling points was the diesel engine part of the 8kW Fischer Panda generator had been recently replaced. We inherited a generator with a brand new 2-cylinder Kubota diesel turning a fully functional 230V/50Hz generator. Great! Especially because the generator provided the 230V AC power needed to run the pumps for the water maker…
The look on my face says a lot. Getting this exhaust manifold and mixing elbow disassembled and out of the engine room so it could actually be worked on an repaired was a real pain in the ass!
However, all good things come to an end and over the last couple months the generator-side had developed a slow coolant leak, a slow salt-water leak, and a slow oil leak. Argh, there literally aren’t any more fluids that could be leaking! We’d been nursing the generator along for awhile, but seeing as in Sint Maarten any needed parts can be easily shipped in from the US at duty-free prices, it was time to roll up our sleeves and get these nagging issues fixed once and for all.
The Water Maker
Our beloved water maker is one of the best quality-of-life components we have aboard Matriarch. So when the water quality coming out of the water maker started to decline, we started getting worried. Over the course of 4 or 5 weeks, we went from producing water at 180ppm (parts per million of dissolved solids in the water) to over 500ppm. Once the kids started tasting the difference, we knew for sure something had to be done!
The Rig and Deck Hardware
Unless our plans get derailed by Covid travel restrictions we’re planning on approximately 5000 nautical miles of sailing before the end of 2021, so we took the opportunity to get our standing rigging professionally inspected and replaced a few minor pieces of hardware to keep everything ship-shape before we’re off voyaging again.
The Forward Head
When you’ve got three growing kids all using the same head (toilet), it’s pretty friggin’ important to make sure that head is in prime condition at all times! The macerator pump in our forward head (yes that’s the one the kids use) has been sounding a little worse for wear over the past several months and when we started noticing some suspicious brown liquid appearing around the base of the toilet, we knew it was time to replace that pump and make it right once and for all.
Some Sewing Projects
We invested in a Sailrite heavy duty sewing machine before we left North America and we’ve definitely put it good use since. However, since it weighs 65lbs and lives in a deep compartment in the bow under the v-berth, we like to save up our sewing projects until we have enough queued up to make it worth the effort of hauling out the machine and having it take over our salon for a couple days.
In this case, our project included re-stitching our dinghy chaps (between the UV and constant chafing they were starting to look a little worse for wear) and making a couple new cockpit cushions (we wanted to re-use the stuffing from a number of our original cushions that were end-of-life).
