Moho Cay: Repairing Generators

Sunday, February 2, 2003

017-31.500 N
088-11.880 W

Ahoy from Moho Cay which is off of Belize City, Belize. We pulled back into Moho Cay to drop off Guy Rodomista, a neighbor from home and to effect repairs on my wonderful Fischer Panda generator.

Due to another cold front we decided to make the trip from Lighthouse Reef to Moho Cay in one jump instead of breaking it into two segments. We got off to a shaky start when the autopilot malfunctioned, but I quickly diagnosed that problem as a bumped rudder position sensor and we were off in about 10 minutes. Luckily the weather was very cooperative and we had a great sail all of the way back. The winds had been from the east and we entered Moho Cay near high tide (a big 6"), and made it through the channel without too much trouble. I think that the wing keel plowed a good 6" of silt for about 50', but we eventually made it in. Much better than our trip out.

On Sunday Guy headed home and we began getting the boat ready for removing the generator. Simply un-wiring/plumbing the generator too a solid 1/2 day. On Tuesday afternoon, Eric, the son of Art and Lynn Schneider of Margaritaville, arrived from the US. Eric is a certified marine mechanic and does very good work. Within 3 hours of his arrival we had the generator out of the boat (not a small task considering it weighs 275 lbs) and had it torn apart so that we could examine the damage. I had previously determined that a valve spring had broken and that the push rods were bent, but until the head was pulled there was no way to determine if there was more severe internal damage.

I was thrilled to see that the damage was limited to the valves and push rods. The valve had hit the top of the piston, but it didn't appear to have damaged it. The valve had been driven into the valve cover, cracking it, but Art had a spare cover. The next day Eric replaced the valves and we had it re-installed in the boat. We fired it up the same day and it's been humming away every since. Perhaps it's just my imagination, but it sounds better than it every has.

What's kind of sad/amusing is that Margaritaville has the exact same generator that I have. Art's generator died a week or two ago and Art had to pull his generator too! An idler arm had broken on his generator, and this required a much more extensive breakdown than mine did. He's had to do 4 tear-downs in 3 years, so he's used to this. What's so very scary is that he's had more failures on his generator than I've had on mine, and our generators were purchased at about the same time. It sure makes me wonder if Fischer Panda or Farymann produced a batch of bad motors/generators. Whatever the cause, they certainly don't stand behind their product or understand customer service.

The current motor was provided by Fischer Panda last January and the motor carries a 1 year warranty. The motor failed 11 months later. I just received e-mail from them stating that this isn't a Fischer Panda warranty issue and that I have to deal directly with Farymann! What!!! I have no contacts there and FP provided the motor. Why on Earth should I be forced to interact with Farymann? This is crazy. On top of that I've already shelled out $600+ for parts and $300+ for Eric's mechanic services.

We've re-provisioned the boat and are planning on pulling out of Moho Cay today and heading back to Lighthouse reef via Turneffe. Yesterday we went to the Saturday vegetable market at Queen's Square and picked up lots of vegies for the fleet at Lighthouse. That was fun and very colorful.

That's about it from here and I need to get the boat ready to leave. Bye until later!

-- Geoff & Sue
Log ID: 335