Compressor Woes

A month or so ago I tested our scuba compressor and discovered that there was some blow-by on the high pressure heads... Confused... Well basically that means that the scuba compressor will barely be able to fill a tank and worse, the boat will fill with an oily smoke that will make shelley really happy... NOT!

So what do we do?

The simple answer is to by a new compressor. But the truth is we can't afford the $3 to $6 thousand for a brand new one.

Which leaves places like eBay and Craig's List... This option has now officially driven me crazy.

I connected with a man in Washington DC who had EXACTLY what I needed but was very reluctant to ship it to me... So I haven't heard back from him so I assume that he sold it to someone local.... Rats...

I am now trying to get a friend of mine to look at another unit in Dallas Texas... This one is newer but also more expensive.... and heavier... and bigger... and more expensive to ship....

So What do we do?

I'll keep looking and hoping...

On a happier note we are now the proud owners of all the gizmo's that we need to make our own soda pop on board... Shelley found that many cruisers have gone to a product called Soda Stream because of the cost and lack of available and or affordable pop in some places.. The downside to the Soda Stream is the cost of the C02 cartridges required to make it work...

After some extensive internet research we found that for about $100 we bought an adaptor from a standard 20lb. CO2 cylinder to the Soda Stream cylinder.

We also found syrup in bulk for $15 per gallon which will make soda pop easy and crazy cheap!


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If It Weren't for Bad Luck....

Have you ever had a day when you decided afterwards that you would have been better off staying in bed..... After days of trying we have now discovered a couple of things with the steering on the boat... The $79 ram at Princess Auto is what they call an unbalanced ram, which like me, means it will not work to steer the boat... Not only that, when I installed it, I turned the wheel of the lower helm and oil just gushed everywhere from the rear seal...

So now it means that I had to find a balanced ram... After all kinds of mis-adventure I have finally found one at Redden Marine in Washington State....
with shipping it will cost just under $900.... That is a big expense we were not counting on... But like most people have said, better for it to go now than when we were 200 miles from shore in a storm....(I know the picture says $984, but they sold it to me for $850 plus shipping)




I really tried hard to buy one in Canada but even though this Teleflex steering ram is made in Richmond BC, it costs almost $1200 to buy in Canada... Crazy eh?

Hopefully, it will be at the mail box next week and we can get it installed before the weather gets too cold....

This week I had to work on Friday so nothing else got done.. Maybe I can spend some time tomorrow (Saturday)...



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