So it’s a new year, full of promise, hope, adventure, and excitement. And by the looks of things so far, there is also quite alot of boat maintenance in my near future. It started out nice enough though. For new year’s eve, we hosted a potluck dinner on Andiamo for sunset time. Monica and her crew of friends visiting from Guatemala joined us, as did several fellow cruisers, like Rob from “Siqqituq”, Sara and Stuart from “Marie”, and a few others. We had a great evening of cocktails, food, and more cocktails.
After a good dinner and lots of holiday cheer, we all headed ashore, where the new year’s party at Tranquila was in pretty full swing. The place was packed. Last time I saw Tranquila that packed was during Semana Santa (Holy Week, the week leading up to Easter, which is the busiest time of the year for Utila). It was a great bunch of people, and ringing in the new year there was like doing it with a bar full of good friends.
Just before New Year’s came around, Ann, a Swedish dive instructor friend of mine I met on Utila last time I was here, arrived on the island on her way towards Roatan to start a new dive instructor gig. She needed a place to stay while she was there, so she took up one of the cabins on Andiamo. It was cool, because Sjelle, who’s from Denmark, had someone else to hang out with.
Starting literally from New Year’s morning, Andiamo’s troubles began in earnest. To start things off, when we got back from all the new year’s festivities, the batteries on the boat were dead. I’d never seen the batteries so dead, and couldn’t understand why they were so dead. That morning, I discovered that my batteries gassed, that’s where all the battery acid in them evaporated. That’s enough to do it. So after scrounging up some good water to put into the batteries, I had to borrow another boat’s battery to get my engine started up.
After that, came the starter, which I had been battling with for quite some time over the past month since I’ve left Guatemala. I tried to get the starter fixed by a local mechanic who had worked on it before, but this time he couldn’t get any more love out of it. But, he DID have an old Perkins engine in his yard, that just happened to have a starter on it that also happened to be the exact same kind of starter I have on my engine. So I managed to talk him into letting me have that starter so I can get the boat to La Ceiba so I can get mine worked on. He was nice enough to let me take it. After some finagling and even a little rebuilding by yours truly, I got the other starter installed on the engine and working.
Once I got the starter issue squared away, we had a plan to head over to Cayos Cochinos for a day or two, but not before going to La Ceiba to do some shopping and provisioning. Ann came along so she can catch a ferry to Roatan, where she was going to be starting her job.
Once we got to La Ceiba, I discovered some other problems that I had to resolve, that in relation to everything else appeared to be pretty minor. Then a coldfront passed through and made the weather absolutely horrendous, so now we had to wait for that to pass. Once it did about 2 days later, and the weather looked ok, we decided to make a run for Cayos Cochinos. So we left on the early afternoon on the 10th to try to get there.
About a couple of miles out of La Ceiba’s breakwater, I began to notice a smell coming from the engine. Turned out that there was steam leaking out from some water hose, and it was spewing everywhere. We noticed that water temp was rising through the roof. After assessing that there was no coolant or water in the freshwater system due to a leak, I put in some more fresh water and that brought the temperature back down. But because there was a leak, I had no choice but to turn the boat around and head back to La Ceiba so we can figure out the problem.
Once we got back to the shipyard, I checked out the engine, and found the leak. I also noticed that there was a nasty burning smell coming from a bearing on the propeller shaft on our way back to La Ceiba. I tell ya, when it rains, it fricking pours.
The next day, I got the leak fixed on the freshwater supply line, and replaced some bad hoses on the engine. Sjelle and I had a hell of a time getting the engine apart to replace the hoses, but we did get it done. Once I had the leak fixed, I had a mechanic come aboard to help me figure out was causing the problem with the shaft. And in a most illustrious way, and thankfully non-damaging way overall, we discovered that the gearshift cable was no longer operational when I tried to take the boat out for a test spin so the mechanic can look at the shaft in action.
So now I had to replace the gearshift cable, which thankfully I had a spare, which after my throttle cable experience in Belize, I knew I had to have. I also ended up deciding to buy yet another one to replace the throttle cable as well since it was looking kinda rough once we opened everything up. After making those repairs, we did another test spin to ascertain what the problem was with the shaft.
One mechanic was trying to tell me I had to pull the boat out so they can take off the shaft and take everything else apart so they can figure out what the problem was. I was resisting doing that, because I felt that the problem can be diagnosed, and even remedied without the need for an expensive haul-out, which I had just done back in May of last year. I also felt like all this should have been inspected while the boat was out of the water and any potential problems be nipped in the bud. Unfortunately, I took the yard manager at his word that the shaft and prop systems had been fully checked out back then.
Anyway, it turned out that this bearing and mechanism on the shaft were bad, resulting in the need for some parts to be replaced. I may have to have new parts shipped down from the states, which won’t be cheap, or I may be able to have the parts rebuilt or fabricated by a pretty competent-looking machine shop here in La Ceiba. I’ll know more in the next couple of days, and hopefully get this issue resolved so I can get Andiamo rolling again.
I also found out that my sister Judy is in Guatemala until next weekend! I may try to sail back to Rio Dulce so I can go and meet up with her for a day or so, but it all depends on what happens the next couple of days. It would be nice to see her if even for a short time while she’s in these parts.
We’ll see what happens.