Limerence Update #65

April 2005-May 2005

Final Weeks in Roma Italy

The final two months in Roma found us dealing with many technical jobs aboard Limerence. For those of you who maintain sailboats, this update will be interesting. And, for the pilots in our audience, we have a short story about flying in Italy. We'll start with the fun story, and then tell you about our boat jobs.

Doug is an experienced private pilot and enjoyed flying in Spain at Empuriabrava. What a great experience! He rented a plane, hired a local instructor, and flew for over an hour. Writing another entry in his log book for Italy was something he just HAD to do before we started traveling. Doug wanted to see some of the countryside from the air, and fly over Limerence in the Porto Turistico di Roma Marina. The general aviation flying practices in Italy was indeed a learning experience! Doug contracted with a instructor pilot, rented a Cessna 172, and flew out of the Urbe Airport. This historical airport was the first in Roma, and used during the Mussolini years.The aircraft had some deficiencies in that the engine wouldn't start immediately, the GPS unit didn't work, there was no intercom between the instructor and  Doug, the radios worked intermittently, and the door popped open during fight. Otherwise, everything else was normal on this old bird. On the funny side, when flying at 1000 feet five miles offshore and Doug expressed some concern, the instructor casually said they could swim ashore if the engine malfunctioned. YIKES!

Doug ready to fly at the Urbe Airport	Porto Turistico di Roma from the air

The flying environment for private pilots is VFR, and uses a complex system of mandatory reporting points every ten miles. The confusing thing is the fact that they require the transponder to be placed in the "stand by" mode. That's a device that gives radar controllers the position, altitude and speed of the aircraft. Without this, the controller doesn't have an identification of your airplane. Since Doug was flying between three major airports, this was a concerning issue. On returning to the airport, the landing was delayed because of a disabled aircraft on the runway. The required holding pattern was a continuous corkscrew turn instead of the standard one minute legs. It seems that general aviation in Italy is being discouraged. There are many humorous aspects to Doug's 90 minutes of flying, so if you want the whole story, buy him a drink next time we get together.

We are learning how to cope with boat maintenance in foreign countries with different cultures. We’ve had surprises. In our update about getting to Mallorca, we talked about many issues including power  converting our American 110 boat to 220 volts - which is the European standard. We continue to find differences. Our ¼” high-tensile anchor chain bit the dust and part was a rusty mess. In Europe there is no such thing as inches. We needed 8mm chain to replace it. That chain size doesn’t fit the capstan on our Maxwell windlass. There wasn’t a compatible capstan to be found in Italy. So, we ordered a new one from the manufacturer located in New Zealand. Customs delayed the package for a week and then assessed us an importing charge.

 Douglas stumbled upon an article on the web about Volvo engine transmissions failing. Limerence has a Volvo 2003, and it has served us well. However, it seems that often the spline gear which connects the transmission to the engine wears out, and the little pointy parts of the gear get rounded. Suddenly, the transmission fails because the splines can no longer engage. (Volvo Penta has corrected this problem on newer engines) Pulling out our transmission showed that indeed, our spline gear was wearing. We ended up sending the transmission gear to a company in England for a rebuild. They converted the splined shaft to a hexagonal shape and provided a replacement flywheel plate. Doug is very concerned about other cruisers with older Volvo Penta 2000 series engines, not knowing about this serious danger.We are happy with our solution, and the fact that the replacement came from within the EU.

Spline gear showing wear	New hexagonal gear

 Our next issue was repairing our wind generator. No one in Europe could repair it, so it was sent back to Florida where the Fourwinds manufacturer offered to replace the generator. It took weeks to get the replacement through customs, pay the fees, to discover that the wrong unit was sent. Another unit was sent by the manufacturer and we went through the same dance with customs. After many hours of installation and trouble shooting, the new wind generator is working. Now another success story! Our Vacuflush toilet needed a rebuild after years of use, and we had all the spare parts. It only took three solid days to finish that job. You must admit that the head is a priority!

Next job was to repair our Spectra Watermaker which  produces fresh water from salt water with a reverse osmosis process. Ours happened to produce salt water instead of fresh! We found the tip of the membrane broken and after trying to glue it, began the process of finding a replacement. Our lucky day was to see a truck in the parking lot of the marina with the word "watermaker" written on the side as part of the services provided. Sometimes things just go right. We found the business owner of the truck, placed an order, and had our new watermaker membrane in our hands in three days!

Satellite dish with windgenerator above	The broken watermaker membrane

Finally, since we have become accustomed to satellite television at the dock, we coveted the idea of finding a small camper version of a satellite dish to carry with us as we travel. Doug was thrilled to find one in a small electronics shop and skipped back to the boat with delight. While fiddling with his new acquisition on the dock, he set it down and the wind blew it into the drink. PLOP. The dish wasn't even fifteen minutes old. What a dilemma. A friend came to our rescue with a large fishing net and we amazingly retrieved the dish after only five tries! The nice thing is that the electronics were not attached.

 It seems that cruising yachts are always repairing or replacing critical pieces of equipment. Every person here has stories and we aren’t unique! It is just so hard to keep things operating in a salt water environment. Our advice to cruisers is to carry on board back-up parts for every critical thing on your boat. We did find quite a few services for cruisers in nearby Fiumicino, and they are listed in a document called "Yachtie Yellow Pages" which is maintained by the cruisers. While we enjoyed spending the winter near Roma and our marina was modern, there were serious deficiencies regarding security and customer service. We were part of a group of cruisers who created a "survey" of opinion to help the marina understand our needs. You can find a copy of that summary under "Cruising Guides" on this website, and a link to the "Yellow Pages".

Trastevere neighborhood	Famous Trevi Fountain

 The best part about living in Europe is making new friends, and learning about other cultures, politics, history, weather and geography. It is truly astonishing and stimulating. We continue to enjoy this lifestyle and wonder what we’ll learn around the next corner. Our families are supportive and we will have plenty of stories to tell our grandchildren. We plan to spend the next winter in Marmaris Turkey. We'll visit Sicily, Croatia, and the Greek Islands, on our way to Turkey. Don't forget to send us a note in our website guest book. . . We love hearing from you!

Fair winds friends,

Doug and Judy

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