A Sail of Two Idiots (45 page)

I had the freezer recharged because it needed to be defrosted constantly, but it turns out that that's just life in the tropics. I also put more foam insulation around the freezer lid to help keep out the hot air.

I finally had Enza Marine fix the Freon mess with our refrigerator, the one that the guy in the Bahamas screwed up. Although the fridge was fixed (for potential buyers), we still didn't use it because we didn't want to use the energy.

The windows stopped leaking! Caulking inside and out did the trick. So did a few sunny days (and some tarps). Finally! Then it was time for the door to start leaking … I fixed that too.

One of the starter batteries died. Those buggers are really heavy. I managed to get it out of the engine compartment, up the stairs, and into my dinghy (which didn't start initially) … Got a lift to the store, purchased a new battery, and did all that in reverse.

The starter motor was the next thing to go kaput and turned out to be a real pain in the butt. Every time Enza Marine and I thought the problem was fixed, the engine wouldn't start the next morning. I would dread turning the key, just as I'm sure Enza dreaded turning on their VHF (guess who?!). After cleaning it and then rebuilding it, I eventually ended up with a new used starter.

By then, the kill switch on the other engine froze up, and my problem changed from not being able to start the engine to not being able to turn it off. I learned where to kill the engine directly on the engine itself without
losing a finger. I then spent two weeks trying to track down a cable (it was no longer made in the length I needed).

Water and diesel fuel were accumulating under one of the engines, so I used paper towels to track their sources and did what I could to fix the problems (new O-ring/caulk).

A freshwater tank sprang a leak, which caused the water pump to overwork and also caused some storage areas and bilges to fill with water. I tried several products that were supposed to work underwater, with no luck. There was no way to get into the water tanks to fix them from within, so I had to try something else. Such as emptying one water tank (over 90 gallons of hard-earned water) and using epoxy to shore up the tank from the outside.

I went to a marine store, was ignored for a bit, asked a question, and then was rudely asked by the salesperson where my husband was. Bite me. After getting what I needed despite the chauvinistic salesman, I was excited when my fix held! It rained eventually, so the overflowing rain gutters filled the tanks quite nicely.

I found more water in the bilge, this time salt water, and traced it to the through-hull seacock (put in for the watermaker that we never used). The seacock is basically a pipe and valve that bring seawater in from underneath the boat to the watermaker, which then converts it to freshwater. The fittings around the seacock leaked after a while. This fix had to be done from beneath the boat, so it would have to wait for the next haulout. I was able to reduce the leak to a small trickle using epoxy and decided to be happy with that.

The bottom paint we had just put on was not holding up, leaving the hull looking splotchy and bare in places. We later learned that all the other boats that had the same antifouling paint had the same problem. Apparently we all bought the same bad batch of paint. While the company was willing to pay to replace the paint, we'd still have to pay for another haulout. It wasn't worth it.

The mainsail bag started disintegrating. We were determined to keep that thing functional because it kept our very large, very heavy sail nice and neatly put away on our boom. Lots of glue, a little sewing, and some magic spells kept it together.