Greetings from Ensemble.
We safely arrived at the San Blas Islands at 9:30am this morning.
We weaved our way through the coral and found a nice sheltered anchorage.
It looks something like Gilligan's Island - all we're missing is the castaways.
We spent the day cleaning and relaxing. The last week was pretty tiring -but I think we handled it well - and it proved the 'double handed' sailing can work for us.
The down side was the number of equipment failures we had - the Iridium phone failed yesterday - so now Inmarsat only (0087 077 3189026) and this means a bit of work getting things ready for the next leg. Fortunately Panama and Colon should have some decent repair shops...
I decided to give fixing the impellor on our diesel a go (the deisel also drived our water maker and most importantly the airconditioning...). I went into the forepeak and eventually found the spares for the diesel. Rummaged through the bookshelves and found the manual... only to find the section on impellor replacement was blank (literally - "refer to page 4-12" - page 4-12 is completely blank!) Nothing anywhere else in the manual either. Onan must want you to go to them to fix it! I tried anyway. Bent over double - squeezed into a corner of the engine room in 35C heat - after 2 hours I'd replaced the unit. Turned the diesel on .... and same fault (and one less impellor). So - airconditioning until Colon!
... A couple of days on the beach will do us well....
Cheers
Dave and Magali
152Jan2012 002