Maintenance

Thursday 12th October 2006

Fliss……………….

Hello were still in Las Palmas as its boat maintenance week.

So not a lot to tell really….

I wandered in to Las Palmas today to have a look around whilst Pete installed the battery charger and serviced the windlass.

Just my luck it’s a bank holiday in Spain so everywhere was shut so I headed off to the tourist area of Las Palmas. You could be anywhere in Spain as it’s a long promenade of restaurants, bars & souvenir shops, there’s a lovely long clean sandy beach with massive surf.

Interesting enough very few foreigners and mainly Spanish, the Brits & Germans must be in Masplomas.

Being a major town there is fantastic shopping (not today though) and it’s very multicultural.

I think that wandering down the back streets at night wouldn’t be a good idea at all as during my expedition today I noticed hoards of Africans sitting on street corners.

The other day Pete & I had a wander around the city centre & found a fabulous shopping centre & supermarket. As we went up the escalator we heard a crash and a local man had tried to take a trolley up the escalator and of course as it went up the trolley fell back onto the man and knocked him out for a good 5 seconds, god knows what he was thinking as several bottles of wine had been innocent victims of fool hardy behaviour. The chap was ok but I would imagine felt a complete pilchard.

The guardrails have gone back as the fittings weren’t right, not exactly his fault as some fittings on the boat are imperial and some are metric. Were waiting for the guy to call us so we can pick them up.

Rowing practise today & I ‘m getting much better as I only rowed in one catamaran (owners out thank god)… I didn’t hit it I just sort of ran under it, a wave was to blame as it pushed me off course.

Were looking forward to seeing Mum, Ash & Naomi on Sunday morning. We’ll probably leave here tomorrow or early Saturday.

Pete……………

Quick one from me because I am servicing the roller-reefing (drum off and oil). Installed the new battery charger last night and this morning. Connected it up and fired-up the generator and it worked, pumping a good 28 amps into the batteries. Fifteen minutes later, the generator engine fluttered and went into idle and the battery charger died. I thought we had blown another charger but subsequently found that the generator cut-out switch had popped-out. It refused to be reset so I took the generator apart to find that the switch was part of a sealed unit. At this point, the switch reset itself so we are back in business after a lot of wasted time.

Boxed-in the wires to the battery charger to stop stuff in the locker snagging and pulling them out and I have given the windlass a very long overdue service. Of cause, many nuts were difficult to budge but WD40 and half an hour tapping them with a hammer persuaded them to budge (an old trick taught by my dad).

This week, as you can tell, is maintenance week. Lots more jobs to do but we shall slowly tick each one off before heading off to the Cape Verdes.