The Best and Worst of Repairs

New Bern, NC

35 06.02 N 077 02.56 W

Well, this morning I was well humbled. All winter, the performance of our refrigeration system has been degrading. After leaving Vero it quit almost 100%. Libby and I had all sorts of theories of what went wrong. We kept trying to add more R123A refrigerant, but that didn't help.

Our friend Les recommended a local journeyman, Bert. We contacted Bert before leaving Florida and set up a long term appointment in New Bern. Today, Bert fixed everything. We had air and/or moisture in the system, and the R134A was low despite our efforts. Bert sucked out the old gas with a vacuum pump and then recharged it. Now it works great. Best of all, he only charged me $85. A real bargain. Thank you Bert and thank you Les.

What about the worst of repairs. The worst repair is when you misdiagnose the problem and repair the wrong thing. (I suppose you could do still worse by destroying things attempting the repair.) Well, we bought two new thermostats, thinking they were the problem. I even blogged about how unhappy we were that thermostats failed so quickly. The real problem had nothing to do with the thermostats.

So. It is still sound advice for cruisers to plan on doing all their own repairs themselves. However, today's experience demonstrates that it is sometimes better and cheaper to get a professional to fix things. I think I'll also start sending more appeals for help and advice on this blog. In recent months, when I did that, I got excellent advice back from my loyal and experienced readers. Thank you everyone.

p.s. Last night we had dinner on board Viking Rose with Richard and Penny and new friends Kathy and Roger. They talked us in to staying longer in New Bern. There will be a Civil War reenactment of the battle of New Bern on Saturday. That should be fun.

After returning to Tarwathie I told Libby how much I admired Viking Rose. She's a beautiful and comfortable boat. Libby said, "Yes, but too much boat for us." She's right of course. Tarwathie suits our needs perfectly. How fortunate we are to have found such a good match.