Captain's Blog-Bonaire to Sint Maarten
We made it to Bonaire – safely, and very, very happily. However, it was a sea trial in essence - we weren’t going to do a 450 nautical mile open ocean crossing at 4.5 knots with an overheating transmission. And the bilge/shower pumps needed to be fixed. That’s how Jeff went from passenger to crew. Jeff masterfully replaced the two bilge pumps and float switches that had somehow simultaneously malfunctioned. On a new island, with new eyes, we examined the transmission. We poured over the shop manual. * NOTE* This next part will be technical, and probably boring, for most, but I will try to explain it in terms that I (and everyone else) understands. The manual advised changing the angle of the oil cooler – Kenneth (Aruba mechanic) and I had changed its angle in our attempts to diagnose the gear issue, so maybe this was the problem. It also advised that the transmission cooler be the first to be cooled by “raw” (ocean) water, but, on H2, it was the last – after coolers for t