Chasamba – Travels Across The Seas » Blog Archive

Angkor Wat and Alternators

Filed December 10, 2009 at 5:06 am under by Administrator

victory v!

People sometimes ask us whether we get bored not having anything to do. This just shows that many people do not have experience in trying to keep a sail boat working. It seems to me that we work much harder than we ever did, and have to learn new skills all the time. Take the example of our new alternator….

We were supposed to be going to Cambodia to renew our visas and to see Angkor Wat. A few days before we had to leave, a friend on another cruising boat passed along a tip on a good place to get a big alternator for a good price, and of course, we went right off and bought one- we have been starved of electricity just lately, with cloudy skies and often not much wind. Well, fine, we got the alternator, but it had a regulator which needed to be attached, and the fun started…we installed the alternator, with help from our friend, Bill, and tried to start the engine. No go. Unfortunately we had to leave for our flight, so Bill kindly said don’t worry, he would come over and fix it tomorrow. He was as good as his word, and got it fixed, unfortunately the switch preventing starting in gear had blown. Ok never mind… After 3 minutes running, the oil cooling housing blew up. Luckily Bill realised it wasn’t an electrical fault, and turned the engine off in time, then sent us an email explaining what had happened. Oren then spent the next week in Cambodia worrying about the engine…

We got back, and Oren took the housing to a workshop, where it fell into several smaller pieces, and he had to threaten them that he would sleep outside their shop until they fixed it. Got it back on to the engine, and put the engine on- no oil pressure. Why? The oil pressure warning switch had blown. Got it fixed, luckily Bill had a spare. Also got round to rewiring the instrument panel and discovered there was no proper ground wire…..But now everything is working ok, meanwhile, we learned quite a lot about electricity and have done a lot of improvements since- the 12v socket in the cockpit now works perfectly, the cockpit light works, there is a backup bilge pump alarm on the panel now, and Oren is now working on installing another bilge pump! So all’s well that ends well!

Cambodia was interesting, and Angkor Wat is well worth a visit, it is so big that the days we spent cycling round it were just a drop in the ocean. Cambodia is much poorer than Thailand, and there are still many ox-carts and oxen pulling ploughs. The main crop is rice, and rice paddies line most roads. At this time of year the rice is nearly ready, and looks like corn, tall fronds waving in the wind. Apparently this year there wasn’t enough rain, and the crop will be smaller than usual, but it is hard to tell where more rice could grow!