Genorator Capacitor!!

The other night wanting to watch a movie and the housebank batttery voltage being low, Jerry went to start the generator and it started perfectly, but then after a few seconds he realized that there was no eletricity being generated.

Shiraz helping Jerry in the engine room!

After a few minutes in the engine room he figured out it was the capacitor (which is required for the genorator to start generating electricity.)  This has happened a few other times, when we leave the switch in the on postition and try starting the genorator and shorts it out.  So we went to turn on the big engine to charge up the batteries and the altinator was not charging.  Now the alternator has been on the fritz for a while now, usually it does not want to work right away, but after a while of motoring it starts to work, so we knew that needed to be fixed.  With not having another capacitor on the boat we needed to go to town, but not having much faith in finding one.  There was one hardware store in Golfito that had one that was 60uf but we needed 50uf, luckely Tim ( of land and sea) knew of Robert who we called who knew of a place in Ciudad Neily (a town not quite as far as the boarder but about 45 minute ride.)  We packed up the capacitor and the alternator (Robert also new of a place to get it worked on) and jumped on the first bus that came by to Ciudad Neily, now this was a cheaper bus than the bus going all the way to the boarder, but it was very crowded and they stopped much more often.  And of course it started raining and we were not prepared with an unbrella, so we had to stop at one of the grocery stores to buy some very expensive, cheap quality umbrellas.  We easily found the place that sold capacitors, they did not have the exact one, but the one they had would work according to the manufacture of the generator.  We then found the place that would work on the alternator, with our little spanish and his no english it was  difficult to communicate, but we managed and figured it was the brushes and we will be going back on Friday to pick it up. 

The old capacitor!

After a much shorter bus ride back, because we took the more expensive bus, we got to Land and Sea had a few beers with Denny and Becky from SV Kokomo who are leaving the next day for Panama, got back to the boat put the new capacitor in and started the generator...yeah it works.