Little buggers hit when you least expect it.

Yesterday late afternoon, Ann and I are winding down a bit from boat work getting ready for the crossing to New Zealand and Ann starts her last project of the day, boiling some eggs (great passage late night snack).  “Bob, the stove won’t light”.  Sometimes it just needs a nudge, so I went over to sweet talk it into action.  Nothing.  Nada.  Hmmm, she was just using it about an hour ago to boil dried chick peas to make hummus (another great passage food) and it was working fine.  Maybe the propane ran out.  So, I went to the cockpit, opened the propane locker and changed tanks.  Back down to the galley, switch on the tank switch, then hit the stove.  No flame.  Then it struck me.  No noise either.  When you flip the switch in the galley that controls the remote propane valve out in the locker you usually hear a little; “thunk”.  That’s the solenoid opening the remote propane valve.  I hit the switch a few more times and didn’t hear the thunk.  Rats!  If the solenoid gave up the ghost that’s not good because I don’t have a spare (although I’ve now added that to the ever growing list).

So…since it was evening by now and we’d been working all day I didn’t feel like chasing gremlins, especially since the wiring for this little beast is almost totally inaccessible in the veeerrrry back of the boat.  Under the cockpit.  Past the steering quadrant.  Not fun.  It will have to wait for tomorrow when I’m not so tired.

Morning.  Take our water pot over to Orcinius where they kindly boil water for our French Press so we can have some coffee.  Nothing gets done on Charisma before our morning coffee.

OK, coffee done.  Now what?  I opened the propane locker and stared at the solenoid. The wires that control it go through a little hole in the side of the locker and disappear under the cockpit.  As I’m contemplating this fact (and procrastinating from the job I know I’m going to have to do which is to completely empty the lazarette – which I just packed yesterday – and disassemble the cockpit drain manifold so I can try and squeeze back far enough past the steering quadrant to see something) when Orcinius John came over and said; “why doncha just open this port?”  There’s a 6 inch brass plate in the very back of the cockpit that covers the rudder post and allows access in case you need to use the emergency tiller.  Since I always just think of it as “the emergency tiller hole”, I didn’t think of it as an access plate.  (Sometimes it helps to have a second set of eyes – Thanks John).  So, off comes the plate and sure enough, we have, well, access.  Flashlights, mirrors and a lot of grease on our arms as we could just barely squeeze one arm in the hole and were able to see that one of the wires from the solenoid was just plane broken.  It corroded at a crimped fitting and just fell off!

OK, fast forward a bit – there’s no way I can actually get to the whole length of the wire to fix it so I just cut it and ran a new one through an area I can reach.  Once it’s connected I turn on the switch, light the burner and it works!  Now all I have to do is put all that crap back in the laz and reconnect the drain manifold.  Including the hoisting the 70 pound outboard that I just packed down there yesterday.  In, out and now back in.  It’s a three aspirin day already.

The only good thing about this is that I very much doubt that I could have done this repair under way.  If we had left and the stove went out, we would probably have to return to port.  So maybe these gremlins were actually doing us a favor this time.  Hmmm.