Our year has been pretty hectic up to this point, so our expected departure date has been delayed by about two months, but the day has finally arrived. We left our home in Orlando in a rental car and drove to the marina, which is about two hours away. We packed the boat, picked up groceries and made some last-minute repairs. We then returned the rental car and rode our bikes back to the boat, where we finally attached our…
There are a few luxuries that make the difference between roughing it and living normally. Refrigeration is probably the most important to me, followed by running water. So it was increasingly annoying that the freshwater system on our boat would consistently stop working after being idle for a few minutes. I would then have to go to the power panel and recycle the breaker. In some cases we would need to wait several minutes before turning the breaker back on….
During my first training day on the boat I noticed an issue with the generator. Blue Sky has a fairly capable Cummins/Onan 5kw generator located under the starboard hatch in the cockpit. There is a remote switch located on the wall near the electrical panel that allows the generator to be started and stopped when needed. The problem was that the generator would not run for more than about 5 seconds. It started easily, and purred nicely…for 5 seconds. After…