Day 2 of Engine Bed Work

Mercedes put in another full day yesterday bringing the engine beds down to the required level, with Joel making occasional  visits to make fine measurements.

I made 2 or 3 visits myself but generally stayed away because much as I wanted to begin work on the instrumentation I would have caused too much interference to Mercedes, who had enough problems with the dust and the heat.

However, I did manage to do something constructive in the 45 minutes before Joel and Mercedes arrived at the boat to begin the day's work.  I wanted to get the electric fan and the refrigerator working to give Mercedes some relief from the heat.  He likes Pachuca's water - cool and mineral free - but cold water would have been better.  I started off with the knowledge that both the positive and negative bus bars of the house battery system were functioning.  I soon established that both switch panels are getting over 13 volts from the house batteries.  This had to mean that the panels were not grounded.  I ran a wire from one of the switch panels to the negative bar and the panel came alive.  I was running out of time so rather than investigate the problem further I set up two  ground wires directly from the panels to the negative bus bar and started up the fan just as Mercedes arrived.  I tried the refrigerator, which is not powered through a panel, and it did not work.  Maybe this morning I'll get that going.

I think that my grounding problem is associated with that monitoring system that was  set up in New Zealand. I haven't had time to research it but I have a dim (and unreliable) memory of being told that the system measures the net flow of current out of the bank by monitoring the flow on the negative side.  I think it likely that in removing the wiring associated with the Sabb engine I inadvertently broke a circuit.  (Hmm, I wonder if connecting two of the wires in the bundle that I took off the 160V alternator will do the trick.)

It was just as well that the boat was inaccessible to me because I was feeling very low and not very productive.  In the middle of the previous night I had woken up with gut pains reminiscent of my Tahiti food poisoning experience and I knew what was coming.  Soon the diarrhoea started.  Brenda was very sympathetic until she got sick too.  We had not eaten out the previous day.  It had been too long since we had eaten the fried chicken for lunch so we figured that the main suspect must be the tuna that I had purchased at the market several days earlier.  We had frozen it then thawed and ate half of it and the next evening ate the other half.   From now on we will purchase just enough fish for one meal that night.

While lying in bed I got the bright idea of using my time to apply for the FM3 "non-immigrant" status which will allow me to stay in Mexico for another year (and beyond that if I renew every year).  I already had the required photographs.  The immigration people had told me what documents I required, and that the form could be downloaded from their web site.  I had much trouble with their web site.  The English version was hopeless so I was left to pawing through the Spanish version with little success.  I got on the Web and found much of the information on FM3 to be obsolete.  One site stated that there are "several" FM3 forms.  I didn't have time for this so I engaged Eco Naviera to do the work on my behalf.  They will be paid about $160 USD for their services which involves me producing all of the documentation and their simply filling in a form on my behalf.  Another $180 USD or so goes for the FM3 form itself.

When I went back to close up the boat I saw that the beds were down to the stage where two sections had been cut down on each side.  Over these sections will be the engine mounts, riding on half-inch angle steel.  They will accommodate the nuts for the bolts passing down from above.