Hotwire Enterprises Licks Balls

August 2 - 8, 2007

Editor's Note : I was going to call this entry "The Amp Eating Roach Motel", but as you will read below, I had more problems with Hotwire Enterprises and felt the need to title this entry specifically towards them in the hope that most major search engines will pick up the meta tag and people trying to search on the Kiss wind generator or Hotwire Enterprises can easily find this entry.

Saturday, August 04, 2007 - Hamburger Beach Anchorage, George Town, Exumas
By Tom

We were ready to depart, but there is a tropical depression hanging out down near the Windward Islands and so we are just kind of cooling our heels until we see what it's going to do.

In the mean time, we went out for the first and second day of lobster season. On day one, we snagged four lobsters and one Margate in about thirty minutes. Day two, I brought home four more and a Nassau Groper as well. That's my kind of fishing.

Saturday evening I hooked up with Speedo Ed, his wife Bea, Kenny and Linda and George from St. Francis for a ten dollar winner take all poker game. Amy did not play as she was feeling under the weather. The game didn't last long and in the end, I came home with the big bucks.

In other news, the mail package that my dad sent us back in April finally arrived today. For the record, it was sent priority express via the U.S. Postal service, cost $12 and took 104 days to arrive. Now thats quality service.

For the record, the U.S. Postal service is probably not the way to try and send things to the Bahamas.

Tomorrow it looks as though we will head across to Long Island to try and shake down some of the repairs we've made. If all goes as planned, from there we'll head down to Thompson Bay and then on to the Jumentos, but time will tell.

Ok, talk to you soon

Sunday, August 05, 2007 - Joe's Sound, Long Island
By Tom

We got the boat underway in 5 knots or less of wind by 10 am. We didn't even bother to raise the sails as what ever wind there was present, was right on the nose.

We motored out the north end of Elizabeth Harbour and set the autopilot for the 25 mile crossing. We arrived off of Joe's Sound without incident and navigated the extremely narrow entrance into the sound by 2 pm.

Once the hook was down, we launched the dinghy and headed out for a little spear fishing. We tried three different places but we were limited to one lobster and one Nassau Grouper.

Back on board, I cleaned our catch and then took a look at our wind generator. It is no longer functioning properly and I'm not sure why. I have a couple of theories, but I need to be able to get online to check them out. I guess it will stay broke til we get somewhere with internet service.

I spent the afternoon cleaning up from the wind generator mess and listening to the Nascar race while Amy spent the same time reading. Around 6 pm I made Grouper fingers and we ate them in tortilla wraps with fresh vegetables and grated cheese.

Afterwards, we watched Three Kings with George Clooney and Marc Walberg. It was ok, but not great. To bed by 9 pm

Monday, August 06, 2007 - Joe's Sound, Long Island
By Tom

It got windless, hot and very buggy last night, so we ended up closing the boat up, turning on the generator and running the air conditioner for three or four hours. I know, I know, we are lame, but at least we got to get some sleep.

Being creatures of comfort, the weasels drug out an old sail bag and made a nest right under the air conditioning vent. They burrowed in and didn't move the entire night as they too appreciated the cold air.

Around 11 am, we headed out to do some spear fishing. We tried several spots over the course of an hour and a half and we managed to get four lobsters, but no fish. We packed up our stuff and were heading back to the big boat when the outboard motor quit. Uh-oh.

I pulled and pulled, but to no avail. I ended up taking the engine cowl off and manually chocking the engine (our choke cable is broke) and was finally able to get the engine to run at idle speed. The return trip to the big boat took twenty minutes, but it beat having to row back.

We pulled the engine off and stowed the dinghy. I am going to have to rebuild the carburetor yet again. The fuel down here really sucks and it only takes about 3 months of use to gum the throttle body all up.

We spent the remainder of the day just hanging out on the boat doing odd jobs and trying to stay cool. There was almost no breeze, so it was hard to manage the cool part.

One of the jobs I looked at was to see what's going on with our wind generator as it doesn't seem to be making much power of late. Using my multimeter I was pretty much able to isolate the problem to the rectifier.

See, our wind generator is an alternator, which means it makes AC power. In order to use it to charge our batteries, it must first be converted to DC. This is what the rectifier does, or at least is suppose to do. Mine doesn't do much at all right now. The AC goes in, but nothing comes out. It's kind of like that roach motel ad, "roaches check in, but they never check out". Well, my AC checks in, but the DC doesn't check out. Or something. Anyway, you get the basic idea.

Unfortunately, I do not have a spare rectifier on board, so we will have to seek a replacement in Georgetown. Other than that, not much else to report.

Tuesday, August 07, 2007 - Hamburger Beach Anchorage, George Town, Exumas
By Tom

We awoke to a flat, stiffling calm this morning. By 9 am the temperature was already over 90 degrees. We decided to motor back to Georgetown to try and get our wind generator fixed and to be near replacement parts in case I have a problem when I rebuild the dinghy engine carb.

It was an uneventful motor home, with the only bit of excitement right at the end of the trip when we caught, landed and released a six foot barracuda. We had the hook down in our usual spot by 2 pm and then I tore into the carberator.

By 3:30 I had the engine back together and proceeded to take the dinghy for a test run. The engine ran fine, so I must assume that the offending "gunk" is now gone.

With the dinghy again operational, I zoomed into town to throw away trash and to get some sodas and lime juice. Back on the boat, we surfed the internet trying to find a spare rectifier, but to no avail. Tomorrow I will have to call the manufacturer and get one shipped out.

Ok, talk to you tomorrow.

Wednesday, August 08, 2007 - Hamburger Beach Anchorage, George Town, Exumas
By Tom

I got online early this morning and ordered a new rectifier for the wind generator. It kind of pisses me off, because the manufacturer (KISS) goes on and on in their sales literature about how the generator is so great because it's "made from readily available parts anywhere in the world", but when I called the distributor she said that I could only get the part from her.

Long time readers will know off all the problems we have had with Hotwire Enterprises in Florida, the U.S. rep for KISS. The woman there is a complete moron without even remote traces of brain activity. In the end, I had no choice but to order one from her, have it sent to Reggie Express and then flown down to Georgetown sometime next week. The shipping charges will cost almost as much as the part!

I can't say enough bad things about the people at Hotwire. Avoid them like the plague if at all possible. They are so bad, I have stopped recommending the KISS wind gen even though I think it's probably the best generator on the market. I love the unit, but I'll never buy another one as long as I have to deal with Hotwire for service.

Anyhow, we spent the afternoon doing a couple of sewing projects in the cockpit. It was mega hot and progress was interrupted several times as we had to jump overboard to cool off. Three times during the day, we had the dunking of the ferrets in their small, inflatable fresh water only pool. They aren't real big on the dunking, but at least it cools them off.

Around 2 pm, Norm from Wind Minstrel stopped by and asked if we needed anything from Napa as he was heading out that way. I had tried to find my rectifier (which is an AC DELCO part) on the Napa website, but the site design is so poor that you cannot browse for a part unless you have a make, model and year of the car it is supposed to be in. How lame is that?

Anyway, since Norm was going, I gave him my bad rectifier to see if they could find a suitable replacement and sure enough, the parts guy had several in stock. At $45 it was only 9 dollars more than the one being shipped from the states and thats if you don't count the 20 bucks it will cost to fly it down here!

I swear if I ever see that woman Libby from Hotwire again I am going to beat her to death with one of her own wind generators. I mean for Christ sake, I asked her point blank if I could get a replacement at Napa and she said no, only her "original" parts would work.

It took all of 5 minutes to put the Napa part in and the generator started working normally. Hotwire you can lick Milo's ass. Twice. Ok, I'm done complaining now.

BTW - The AC DELCO part number for the rectifier is AC29.

To celebrate the repair of our wind generator, we dinghied over to Palm Bay Beach Club for a draft beer(me) and a glass of wine(Amy). Yay wind generator!

We were back on the boat by 5 and around 7 we had a sauteed shrimp chef salad for dinner. Afterwards we watched the first half of Domino before the battery on Amy's laptop died. To bed by 9