We have had quite the time with our little honda generator and this repair is definitely one for the books!! As I said in my last post, we took the generator to Electec on Jan. 9th and left it with them. We were not super hopeful that they would work on it immediately so we weren’t surprised to learn on Monday afternoon (Jan. 12) that the technician hadn’t looked at it yet. We were very happy to get a call around 3pm today (Jan. 13) from Electec. The tech checked our machine and could find nothing wrong with it 😳. He said we could come and get it. What?? Did it fix itself? Did the generator just want to go for a fun dinghy ride?? Who knows. We headed over to the Dutch side and Mark had a chat with the tech. They started the generator and it seemed to work like usual. So we brought it back to the boat and used it to charge our batteries for about 2 hours. It ran perfectly!!
We had been doing okay charging our house batteries with the solar panel and the main engine. Our major concern was water. We need the generator to run our water maker and we were down to our last 50 gallons (or so) in the bow tank. Fortunately we found out this morning that the fuel station in the channel (leading to the lagoon) sells potable water. I guess it’s moot now because we can make our own water (which we’ll do in the morning).
Although we’ve had to stay close by that hasn’t stopped us from doing some more St. Martin exploration. Today (Jan. 13) we climbed the steps up to Fort Louis. The fort was built in 1789 to protect the harbor’s valuable goods (rum, salt, etc.) from pirates. What’s left of this fort is located on the north east side of Marigot Bay and it has spectacular views of the bay and the surrounding area. We walked up a few steps (brought back memories of Benabbio – we were in better shape 4 months ago!) and had a good look around. After our Fort visit we went to the daily “market in the square”. It’s basically venders selling touristy clothing and some local crafts and jewelry. It was very colourful and Mark bought himself a nice shirt.
Now that we have our generator back, we can leave Marigot Bay. In the morning (after we’ve filled our one water tank) we’re heading slightly east to Grand Case where we’ll hang out for a few days. John and Sharron (Sundog) returned today from St. Bart’s so they’ll be joining us at Grand Case. We’ll find out all about St. Bart’s and plan our visit for next week.
Crimson Kathryn and her crew 