Penguins, gas and cartoons

One of the challenges of having a penguin like Patrick on board is that he doesn't really pull his weight when it comes to chores. This is his repose whilst we were outside fighting off the seagull mess:

Laid back in the extreme. He was also useless when we returned from a few days away to find that the LPG (gas) alarm would not fire up. That led to some entertaining fault finding and some ripe language.

The Xintrex alarm has a plastic trim panel on the front of it and two little slots on the sides of it to allow you to push in a couple of tabs and then pull the trim panel off. Then you can remove the 4 fixing screws and out comes the alarm unit. Simple enough way to gain access to the wiring behind it you might think.

Well....... Some really smart person decided that it would look way better fitted flush with the galley cabinetry.  Flush means you cannot access the sides of the trim to push in the tabs and hence cannot remove it. You can work out the rest and maybe even hear some of the words that were used to describe this way of fitting the panel:

Looking behind the thing via the under sink cupboard revealed the worst wiring job that we have seen in the boat. We always comment on how neat and well labelled the factory wiring is. This was a real mess even after adding a couple of cable ties and some tape.....

Having castigated the builders for a stupid install and the horrid wiring that must have been done by an apprentice during his first week at work, we remembered that the gas alarm had a sensor problem that was noted during our pre-purchase survey. It was fixed (or should that be bodged?) by the then Nordhavn Europe commissioning manager who was removed from his job not long afterwards. Pity he didn't go before creating this mess. The new team are great. He was not.

As you could not access the terminals on the back of the gas alarm, (because you cannot remove it without trashing the trim panel etc etc...), we cut the wires feeding power to it from  the 24v to 12v step down converter box. Upon checking, we found that there was no output from this box. Wow, lucky, the simplest and cheapest fix possible bar a loose wire! Here is the offending component:

One new box from ebay for the huge sum of £7.99 was delivered (the Xintex version was way more expensive of course) and all was well again after crimping on some new terminals. Just the horrid wiring to tidy up sometime.

We also changed the coolant in the genset. This was about 30 months old and due for a swap. If you leave it in too long, it tends to mess up the various sensors in the cooling system. The one that automatically shuts down the genset if it thinks the unit is overheating is prone to contamination and hence failure with obvious and unwanted results!

Enough of this pre-season maintenance. Life has some lighter sides too. We had a great present from Steve the waterbus man (better known as Bronwen the spaniel's dad) who is a bit of a cartoonist. This was waiting on board for us:

You might spot Bronwen with her food bowl,  Pip and Poppy the white fluffy dogs, Patrick the penguin handing polish to the crew as she hangs over the side and the captain complete with spanner and the intercom microphone on the flybridge.  A great original work that we have framed and will keep on board. By the way, the crew was not entirely happy when a few people said that they recognised her bottom in the cartoon...

We think that Steve would take on commissions. We reckon that he has missed his vocation.