"For Lack of a Nail"....The Alternator Saga

Well, there we were in St Maarten to get something for the boat that we couldn't reasonably get anywhere else. The reason we were in there and the resulting non-affordable outflow of our hard earned money is why I titled this blog the way I did. We told you that the alternator went bad in Nevis - so - here are the connections to the expenditures

Go to St Kitts Marina to get an expert to look things over (no cost) - result - the dock boys pulled Mystic Journey's prow into the cement dock making a major boo-boo - cost of the St Kitts marina

Go to St Maarten (we hadn't intended to go there at all but it was the only place we could get the expertise for a very, very puzzling problem) - extremely expensive entry into Simpson Bay Lagoon. (The gov't is taking over the Lagoon because the present caretakers - through fiscal mismanagement - have driven away all but the super yachts.)

Cost of bench testing the 2 alternators we had - the one that went bad and the spare. The spare was good but the system was still bad - hence the one that went bad.

Cost of moving into the marina for 3 days so the prow of the boat could be repaired (boat boys in St Kitts!).

Having an expert electrician come in the troubleshoot the charging system

Purchase of a new alternator to replace the one that went bad PLUS, purchase of an automatic charging relay to change the design of the system - not directly related to the system problem but a much better end result system.

Purchase of a new improved external regulator for the alternator - necessary to avoid overheating due to high current.

Cost of having the prow of the boat repaired and repainted

So, all of the above highlighted stuffies were the result of the charging system frying an alternator. Oh, and as Cheryl just mentioned, we suffered a goodly number of sleepless nights trying to troubleshoot the original problem - which incidentally was inherent in the initial installation back in BVI in 2007 - it just never popped it's ugly head up. Don't know why I decided to tell you all this except when Cheryl and I talked about it and realized how it all tied together - "for lack of a nail"!!!!

St Maarten is actually a neat island. As we had probably said before, half belongs to the Netherlands and half to France but there is no border per se on land. If you are yachting you can come into the Lagoon either through the French side or the Dutch side. All of the boat repair facilities are on the Dutch side and since the Lagoon is about 12 sq miles, if we had come in the French side we would have had a long dinghy ride just to get the stuff done.



The island has a very European flavour to it. The main road that runs by the Lagoon has 3-4 casinos and many, many restaurants as well as lots of French pastry shops. Lots of resorts on the island and most countries have direct flights to and from, including Canada with West Jet.


The people are friendly for the most part and in spite of all the resorts and the fact that the main currency is the US$ (they use guilders too on the Dutch side and Euros on the French side), prices are quite reasonable. There was a 8 theatre cineplex just up the road. We almost walked up to see "2012" but figured we could get it on DVD when we get back!!

Lots of dogs running loose, even though there is a very active Animal Shelter organization. When we walked over to look at the cineplex we saw a bunch keeping cool in the shade of the parking lot. You could really hear them at night also.

And while I am on the subject of animals, when we were in St Kitts we noticed a pet store that advertised Exotic Tropical Fish - ""Fresh Water Aquarium Fish"" we thought that was quite strange.

So, after having solved our problems in St Maartens, we decided to continue our journey to the BVI's and leave for Virgin Gorda on Sunday night. Next blog will talk about that. One thing we were really happy to discover - fixing the charging problem the way we did has resulted in a vast improvement in all aspects of our charging and battery system. It is finally working like I thought it should but had been told it wouldn't and that "that was okay" In other words - the system is optimized - hurrah for our side!!!