One of the many items on the to-do list is to assemble a list of spares. In some remote parts of the world, if you can believe this, Federal Express does not guarantee delivery by 10:00 a.m. next business day. In fact I’ve experienced just that in the wilderness of Block Island – the mysterious impact of so-called “Island Time”, in that case it meant that all FedEx deliveries (whether you paid big bucks for “next morning” or the discounted “next afternoon”) were put on the same ferry and all arrived on island on the 4:30 ferry.
Apparently in some places even more remote and uncivilized than Block Island it can sometimes take days, even weeks to get things sent to you. I shudder to think how Amazon.com does business there.
What this adds up to for Evenstar and her crew is that we need to float around with enough engine parts under the floor boards to be able to assemble a completely new engine if needed.
Perhaps that’s a slight exaggeration but I know for what this is costing I probably could buy a new engine.
So to minimize the costs and allow room on the boat for storing things other than engine parts (such as food, clothing, children, etc.) I need to come up with Yet Another List – in this case a list of all the things on the engine which would put is in Deep Doo-doo if they broke. If our starter breaks when you are anchored on a remote atoll where we’ve not seen another boat for a week, or the raw water pump seizes up when we’re getting ready to leave somewhere the day before our visas expire – we need to be ready. The boat must be able to move in order to comply with safety, legal, and other demands.
But some things, sure they can wait for parts to be shipped from the closest distributor, put on a plane, then a boat, a smaller ferry, to a skiff with an antique outboard, thrown in the back of a WWII surplus Jeep then strapped to a goat to be delivered to our remote location. There is nothing the generator does that can’t actually be replaced with another function. We can charge batteries, make hot water – really anything but heat and air conditioning can be done by the engine. It just takes longer or uses more fuel. So the generator parts we just will carry some of the more common and easy fixes, and if that is down for a week or three we will deal and FedEx will get a little richer.
But the engine, the rig, and all the safety gear that needs to be there.
So the spares list is forthcoming. A sampling for the engine:
- Raw water pump
- Oil pump
- Circulation pump
- Starter
- Fuel pump
- A fuel injector
- A set of valves
- Oil & temperature sensors
- Thermostats
- Hoses
- Belts, filters, gaskets and other consumables
Of course there will be spares for the dinghy engine, the generator, the wind generator, the electrical system, electronics, cooking, plumbing – this list will grow over time. I’d love to hear some suggestions!
