Block Island - Morning Rainbow

We had a morning shower but with it came a pretty rainbow. It framed the sailboat just aft of us. We invited him aboard later that day, he’s from Atlantic City and has a long trip back starting tomorrow morning.

When I turned on the genset this morning, it started up okay but then stopped after about three minutes. The engine overheating light came on. The raw water flow was okay and I tried again with the same result. After about four hours of debugging and with phone calls to Panda with testing suggested by them, we figured out that it was a faulty water pump on the antifreeze side. There are two water pumps on the genset, one for the raw water that’s used to cool the genset and one for the antifreeze circuit internal to the Panda that goes to the heat exchanger that transfers the heat the overboard water. It’s the antifreeze pump that appeared to have failed. I could order a part from Panda but I decided to take the boat to Hinckley in Rhode Island, a Panda dealer, for the fix. Getting a new pump mailed to Block Island would have been a several day affair, hopefully Hinckley will be faster.

We saw lots of storm clouds marching along the coast on the mainland but none reached us (so far), we’re hoping for a quiet night. It was only in the 70’s today. Onward to Rhode Island tomorrow.