March 17-20, 2009 Nassau waiting on parts....

Brad the "we can fix your generator mon" did a good job this week of tearing apart our whole generator trying to find the problem. The generator is now in pieces and the pieces are strung between our boat and his shop here in Nassau. He did find the problem and it is in the head. We are trying to find a new head at this point, and with phone calls expensive and everyone wanting to put you on hold, we have enlisted "the dads" to help with the search. As we speak we have our "part departments" working from both Denton Texas and Tallahassee Florida! They have some leads, and I have a few I am working from Nassau, so hopefully by the end of the day we will at least have the part located. This is the view inside the engine room of the genset or at least of what is left of it right now!!

In retrospect, I wish I had not let them get so far with this project and just gone on without the generator. We use the generator out here to charge our boat batteries, use our AC appliances like ice maker or chargers for small devices like the cordless drill. We also use it to heat the water via the water heater. I was only running for 1-2 hours each night, charging batteries, heating the water for showers, making additional ice (BTW one small bag of ice in the Bahamas is about $5 US so making it yourself it worth it), and also running the high electrical use items like the water maker. We can use the main engine to do most of this. For instance using the engine we could charge the batteries and heat the water supply on the boat but we still could not use any of the AC appliances and the engine uses twice the amount of diesel fuel to do the same job. Also this puts more hours on our main engine. Yes we could get by without the generator, but now that it is in pieces I feel compelled to fix it before we put it back together or get to ports where getting parts would be even harder.

Since we arrived here in Nassau we have been staying at the Nassau Yacht Haven in a slip. With workers and tools coming on and off the boat you really have to be at a slip. For one night in the marina it cost us about $85 US. Since we are now just trying to find parts, yesterday we moved to an anchorage here in Nassau harbour. The anchorage is nice and free and we can still get wi-fi to search boat parts for only $6.95/day. First pic here is our slip and the following are the views from our anchorage here in Nassau.

There are alot of condos and shacks along the water surrounding us......here are a few of our neighbors!!

So it is not all that bad we have beautiful weather, a nice view and get to party like the tourists each time the party boats go by with the music blaring & watching the tourists "trying" to dance like natives.....it is entertaining.

If we can get the part here Brad says he can have it all back together in a day or two so we are keeping our fingers crossed that we maybe able to leave late next week for the Exumas.

Til then I hope all of your anchorages are as pretty as ours!

The Captain.