Sitting here at Ilha do Cedro, waiting for the rain to clear, I thought it about time to write another blog , which hopefully i can send from Parati. We're both well again, apart from Mom having suffered a repeat bite/sting on her ankle, which has swelled up like a tennis ball, and has driven her nuts! I will try to cover quite a long period, so I will try to cover it all in the blog!
After the tedium of checking in again at Angra, and doing a MultiEconomia shop for provisions, we headed back to Frade to hand over Receita's letter of "Liberation of boat" to Hector, ( Marina Manager) entitling him to give us our boat back ! I had also fitted the new Mastervolt 100amp Battery charger, which we brought back from RSA, but it refused to work off the genset, indicating that the Hz cycles were too high (77hz). We needed to check it out on shore power, and were relieved to see it performing fantastically. Hector called in some local genset experts to see what could be done to correct the cycle problem. Basically, the output voltage and cycles are controlled by the rpm, and when the revs were dropped to the range where the cycle was acceptable, the voltage dropped below the low limitrange, and when the revs were increased to get the voltage above 220v, then the cycles went to 77hz! They tried increasing capacitor sizes, and spent about 7 hours over two days trying to fix it, without success. In the process, they had to replace the impellor, but when we they eventually decided that the problem lay with the rewiring of the rotor ,which was done in Cape Town, I called Enough! They refused any offer of payment, even for the call out, or impeller replacement, saying they had been unable to fix the problem! Would that happen in Cape Town??? Later in the day I opened an Email from Chris Sutton, who had answered my queries on the subject, and he had suggested "load" as a factor.
So next day I started the genset, and applied loads sequentially--- calorifier, freezer, and eventually, when I included the old battery charger, via the plug circuit , in addition to the new charger, we met with success, and the charger started pumping in between 60 and 90 amps! Thanks Chris!!
We headed back to Itanhanga, where we met up with Yvonne & Jeremy from "Jervon", and caught up with each others news. One of the things we chatted about was the sad story about Nic Robinson and Wendy Meyer, from "Sea Jade", with whom we had shared Christmas on St Helena at Annes Place. They were the couple whom I had referred to as Adrenalin Junkies in a blog from the Island. It seems that Wendy was bi polar, and that much of their frenetic lifestyle was an attempt to overcome her depression. Sadly it was in vain, and she OD'd in early Jan while Nic was out kyacking. He took her in to the hospital, where she died. Nic stayed on at the Island until autopsy etc was done , and set sail back to Walvis , single handed, in early April, where according to press reports, he apparantly fell from the mast while effecting halyard repairs, and was lost. Sea Jade was found driftting 300 miles south of St Helena. It was all the more poignant give our own worries about "Jervon"s apparant failure to arrive in St Helena. In fact, Jeremy & Yvonne had checked in with customs and Immigration, and spent two very happy weeks on St Helena, and had many meals at Annes, as well as filling in the Visitors book not far from "Sheer Tenacity"'s entry. Sea Jade was still at the Island at the time, and they had heard about Wendy's demise while there! It just goes to show that government bureacracies cannot always be relied upon, how mortal we are, and how the sea can never be taken lightly!
From Itanhanga we went back to Angra , where we both stocked up on essentials, and dropped off the Merc 3.3 with the shop from whom I had bought it,( as I had finally run out of patience), before working our way down towards Parati. The shopping is very easy and civilised there, as one can trolley directly from the supermarket to the boat. We spent a night anchored behind Gipoia, before motorsailing down to Ilha do Cedro for a few days. The trip down was glorious, and we enjoyed a great lunch on the beach at "Nelson:s bar. As the weather looked set to change, we moved around to the more protected anchorage, which we called "Sand Dollar " bay in our movie, and found a number of local fisherman anchored. It was the start of the Prawn catching season, and so we each bought a kilo of prawns for 12 Reais, and pigged out!
We intend waiting for the weather to clear, and will probably head down to Parati Sunday /Monday. Till Then!
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