Yesterday i explained how stoked i was about the near future of having electricity again. After completing my blog, i went back to Nandji, as i said i would. I tested the batteries that had been on charge and one was holding power good and the other had dropped voltage a bit, but hey, thats what we got so lets just run with it. So back to Nandji we all went and into their new home they were placed. I wired it all together sweet and presto, power!! The wind was blowing at fifteen knots and gusting into the twenties, so the wind turbine was spinning you could say. I sat down stairs monitoring the charge input, relishing what my eyes could see. Hanging around 8 amps of charge.Yep, we are in business… Famous last words… I sat there with my eyes glued on the screen when the charge input dropped from that 8 amps to 0.2 amps. I tapped the screen a few times. Turned it on and off. Whats going on here I thought. I walked outside to check the turbine and there was no more rotor...
The bolt that was used to attach the rotor to the shaft of the generator decided it wanted to break and the rotor flew off somewhere into the a bis. The sun was just going down, the wind was howling, the water was filthy and the sky was grey. I quickly stripped off to my boar dies, grabbed a dive mask, fins and the trusty dolphin torch and in i went. We are anchored in 5 metres of water, so not that deep. I could just make out my finger tips with arms out stretched. I swam around in circles down there for half hour trying to find the rotor. I wish i could say that this story finishes with the treasure being found… Nope, no treasure here.
So for twenty minutes or so, we had outstanding power and full charged batteries. Things were looking good then. But now, we have next to new batteries with no sun or wind power to charge them back up. The last thing i want to do now is to drain these suckers and be back to where we started. So here we are, back in town at a dodgey backpacker travel agent again sponging their wifi and power. But that twenty minutes was amazing!
Its not all doom and gloom though humans. After a chat with a friend on the blower this morning, I got on gumtree in search of a second hand treasure. Possibly we might have found a winner! A bloke is selling a similar smaller model of the turbine we have. But hopefully the rotor fits ours! This is where we did have a small win as he is driving to Townsville next week. To get to Townsville for those of you that didn't know, you have to travel past Airlie beach! Hopefully these pirates have found their treasure.
Believe it or not, dry June stays strong. Even after this roller coaster of emotions the captain didn't go to the rum...
Captain Yosh
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