As you know the run capacitor of the low pressure pump of the water maker broke.

As there was only a code on the capacitor written, I asked Bernd, an electronic freak in Germany, which specs are behind this code. After I sent him an image of the connection of the capacitor he was sure that it is a run capacitor. To the best of his knowledge he told me the capacitor should have 15 microFarad and 400 V.

I also sent a mail to Martin, the owner and CEO of Dessalator, the manufacturer of my water maker. However, due to the Christmas and New Year festivities he had no access to the documentation. Out of his memory he assume 12.5 microFarad. Not too far away from Bernd’s decoded value.

Then Villi, a sailing friend from my days in Croatia and my weather consultant for longer sails, read about my problem in this PW blog. He lives in CH, but is abroad for Christmas vacations, stepped in and send me a link to a document, which allowed to do some careful estimations on the capacity. This also showed values of around 15 microFarad and 400 V.

It was also Vili, who found an online shop in CH, which had a suitable capacitor. A shop in CH was a key condition.

Inge, who lives in Basel, is scheduled to leave Basel on the 4th by train to Paris to fly with Air France to Pape’ete and then to Hiva-Oa to sail with me for 2 months.

Inge, called this online shop but until all was clarified, the shop was closed.

Then Villi had the idea to look for a shop in Basel and found one.

This gave Inge the one and only remaining chance to call the shop on the 3rd and if they have a suitable capacitor, to go there and buy one.

This morning, I got a picture sent from Inge, which displays the capacitor needed. She made it in the very last minute!

Gosh I’m happy! She arrives on the 5th on board of MaRe and connecting the capacitor takes me about 20 min and the water maker will run again.

Thanks again to all who where involved and contributed to the solution.

The idea as such is not really new, because I carry it already since a while around in my head.

The beaten tracks of South Pacific west ward sailing leads from the Society Islands to the Cook Islands. Thereafter there are several routes possible to further head W.

I always wanted to see the Kiribati Island because there, the effect of global warming is supposedly very well to be seen. So they have since years my attention.

Then, a few weeks ago I got the idea to look into a route which brings me to these islands.

Over the last days I read a lot of information about possible island to use as stop overs.

It turned out that several of the Pacific groups of islands belong to the greater group of the Kiribati Island. These groups are, the Line group in the east; the Christmas Island is the best know. In NW the Gilbert islands with Tarawa, the capital town of the Kiribati Islands. Then in middle west the Phoenix Islands and in the S, the Tokelau Islands.

The first route sketch gave a route of almost 3000 NM.

Considering that the main wind is the SE trade wind, we will have 2 long SN and NS legs with quarterly winds which MaRe likes, thus she will sail fast. The EW leg brings us the wind from astern, which makes sailing very smooth.

Looking at all the things I understand so far the “Kiribati Route” as I call it looks promising.

Let’s see what happens when I look into the details.