Up at 5 am and underway right at 5:30. A pretty uneventful motor to the marina. I checked oil level before and after, it is a pretty small leak (but persistent). We leaked out 3 quarts of oil in about 80 hours of run time. What a mess!
The rigger showed up promptly about 10:30, gave us an estimate and we agreed to the price, they left and came back in the afternoon, our topping lift is fixed.
At the same time they showed up, to fix the topping lift, Carlos Flores showed up to work, on the engine. After looking at everything, and running the engine at 2000 RPM, he suspects either two copper washers need to be either replaced or installed for one of the heat exchangers (maybe?). He will probably be here on Monday morning to fix the oil leak. He believes the second problem, the water leak maybe the raw water impeller seal is not good, so that will require a new gasket. Again Monday. (Both of these issues are very small, but it is a boat, so they make a huge difference.
Somewhere in here, Reneé and I went up to the bathrooms and got showers. That felt very good. We take showers on the boat, almost every other day. This is to minimize our water usage, this is important, as we don’t have a level gauge on the water tank. (It has been broke for a year or two).
Water tank level gauge issue:
The tank holds 260 gallons, which is a bunch, our normal usage is about 10-14 gallons per day, assuming it’s just the two of us. So, usually we have no problem going 2 weeks between filling it. I prefer to fill it while in a marina, running the dock water through our reverse osmosis system which results in the water going into our tanks being 1-4 ppm, which compares to taking it straight out of the sea through the RO system at around 250 ppm, or bottled drinking water at around 10-15 ppm, US drinking water standards says less than 500 ppm. So, while it would be fine to take it straight out of the sea, I prefer the ultra clean water from dock water via RO.
Regarding the level instrument, the one that came with the boat uses a capacitive detector, two probes are glued to the outside of the tank, a small current is passed through them and that provides a signal to the level detector. Unfortunately, one of the probe tapes came off, and the computer died (this also affects the holding tank, another story). The down side is that this readout, is not available in a useable format anywhere but on the computer/processor which is proprietary, and that means I can’t have it on any of the other networks that I have on the boat. Another issue is that when the system worked it never worked well. The name of the system is Acu-gage, most people I have talked to about it that have used it, refer to it as Acu-guess. I have been looking for a level probe that I can use that will give an accurate, consistent level indication that works across other networks. Most of them use either a float (means drilling a hole in the top of the tank) or a level Dp (requires drilling a hole in the bottom and top of the tank), the other issue is that the one that goes into the top of the tank only has about 2” above the tank to work with. So, drilling the hole is going to be hard, and then getting the probe installed is also hard. Since both tanks are pretty big, I have not felt pressured to get “just anything”.
Regarding the holding tank, our tank is 55 gallons. We pump it out weekly when we are in a marina, and pump it out probably every other day while we are out. Most other boats we have talked to have about a 30 gallons holding tank, so ours is pretty big. Again, i don’t feel pressured to get “just anything”.
At the end of all of this, we walked to a restaurant, part way there we got a ride by one of the marina employees on a golf cart, we stopped at an ATM and got some pesos as well. The restaurant was: Taberna Española Puerta Cortes
we hade an appetizer sausage and cheese plate.
Reneé had Fideua a seafood dish over pasta with shrimp, crab mussels etc. VERY GOOD!
I had Piglet, pork over potatoes, also VERY GOOD!
Service was outstanding and the only down side was it was a bit expensive.
After dinner we headed back to the boat, part ways back we got a ride in a golf cart again. Once back on the boat we relaxed for a bit, Reneé worked on her book, and I fell asleep.
