Slowly we are restoring the boat, and since last week for the first time we are carefully projecting that we will be able to sail again sometime in August. It has been over 6 weeks now since the lightning hit us, and will probably take another 6 weeks to fix the boat.
Why does it take so long? A live-aboard boat like ours is a crossover between a house and a car. There are various systems, each with it’s own unique characteristics: sailing, diesel engines, dinghy, navigation, 220V, 12V, fresh water, salt water, air conditioning, LPG (gas), fiberglass. Like cars, each system is assembled from components which the ship builder selects and sources from global suppliers. Unlike cars, boats are produced in small series and lack a global dealer, repair, parts network.
With that context, fixing the boat goes through 5 phases:
1 Assessing the damage. Testing all the systems and establishing whether they still work or not, logging damage. It’s made more difficult by the erratic nature of lightning: there seems to be no logic or rule to what breaks. Anything with an electronic circuit board is a prime candidate, but not only. On Rainbow Safari it took us about 4 days, crawling through the boat on our own and with the insurance surveyor. We ended up with a list of 75 items either confirmed broken or needing further testing to pinpoint the damage. The surveyor sent a preliminary report to the insurance, and fortunately for us the insurance accepted the lightning damage claim without more questions.
2 Identifying the parts. Once we knew what was broken, we had to identify the make & model of the parts. Sometimes this is obvious, with parts clearly labeled once you find the label. The inverter/charger falls into this category. For others we had to go back to Leopard and ask, e.g. the LED strip light drivers. (I did not even know they have drivers, and am still not clear on what the drivers do 🙂 But they’re small and expensive!
I am thankful for the program management training I received early in my career at Sapient. Setting up a tracking and status spreadsheet early in this process has made a huge difference and gives us insight into where we are. Not all steps are plan-able, but at least next steps are always clear. After 2 weeks we had most parts identified.
3 Sourcing the parts. This is mainly online work with two primary routes of attack: one is to go to the supplier website, look up their international distributor network, contact local dealers to check stock availability and ask for a quotation. Second is to google for the part and check the results for stock and whether they ship to Singapore. The results can be quite interesting. Magnum Energy, brand of our inverter/charger, apparently has no significant presence in Asia, and their customer service only pointed us to the website dealer finder. The nearest entry is in Hong Kong, but that dealer seems to have gone out of business. So we switched to Victron, who have better presence and a better product. Our 220V AC electricity monitor from Blue Sea Systems is in theory widely available, even on Amazon, but was not in stock anywhere. I emailed the customer service, and was told that their factory had burnt down and had to be rebuilt, and stock would slowly build up again. A few days ago I finally found one I could order from the US!
For the Schneider Electric optical sensor that stops our dinghy crane from bumping into the hardtop support posts it took about 3 days to find the right part and get a competitive local quote. Once ordered (and paid) it took three weeks to arrive. The horn and LPG control system I ordered from a dealer in Connecticut on July 1st, and had the UPS delivery on board in Singapore on July 4th. Global logistics are amazing!
For everything, parts and labour, we need to provide at least two quotes to demonstrate that we are getting a reasonable market price. The quotes first go to the surveyor, and if they approve the quotation they will send it to the insurance for approval. We have been very fortunate both with the (insurance appointed) surveyor and the insurance in that they have been generally supportive, fast and easy to deal with. The insurance even paid us a deposit based on the estimated damage, so we could pay for parts up front.
4 Sourcing the work. Some of the jobs are not so difficult, others are. For the various electric installations our surveyors helped us to find local contractors. Of course these then also need to be available and interested to do the work. It’s a small market, and I spent 2 hours each with four electricians, briefing them on the damage and work to be done, until we found someone who would actually do the work! By now we have a pretty extensive list of marine contractors! For other components we need to select an authorized company anyway, such as for the Yanmar engines or the Raymarine navigation systems. But these are also big ticket items which require more back and forth. The only Singaporean authorized Yanmar shop sent three mechanics for a day to take apart our engines and control panels, to then report: you need to swap out all the electronics on the engines! It took us another 3 weeks to make sure we were ordering the right part numbers and place the order. Hopefully the parts will arrive next week, from Yanmar stock in the US, Japan and Europe. Hopefully they will then also be available for the installation. The company will not schedule their mechanics until the parts are actually here, so there is good potential for losing another week or two.
5 Installing and testing. Once parts are on board and the installer has time, the actual work is almost a non-event. It took about 20 minutes to replace the controller circuit board on the cockpit fridge and bring it back to life. Cool. Of course there is also a lot of testing and hunting for defects: it took us half a day to trace the wires through the boat and find why the newly arrived and installed bow bi-color navigation lights did not work. Usually I observe or work with the technician, which is a great way to learn. I have learned a lot! On the downside, while the work is going on the boat turns into chaos with parts and tools everywhere, wall panels opened up, power switched off. Ute has had to take the kids out and keep them busy and fed off the boat more than once.
Uhm, what does 251 do exactly?
6 Go back to 1. Some damage only becomes visible after you have replaced the first part. Then you go back to step one, try and find out what is wrong, find parts, and start over. We had lost the light in all the cabins because the dimmers burnt out. After replacing the dimmers all the cabin lights work again – with the exception of the starboard corridor light. There are three LED strips, and once the new dimmer supplied 12V to the strip and it still did not work we found that the little driver that sits between the dimmer and the strip does not supply voltage at the strip light end, so needs to be replaced. It will take another 4 weeks or so for insurance approval, getting the part shipped from Italy, and installing it. And then of course we may find that the strip lights themselves are also broken, so we would start over. The lights are a good example, but it will be much more critical once the engines and the Raymarine systems are repaired. There are a lot of systems dependent on these which we cannot even test until the core system is restored. This is our biggest worry now: it could lead into additional 4-week cycles that can easily consume a month or two, and on systems that we need to be able to move again (e.g. depth transducer, radar, anchor windlass).
As of now we have 19 out of 75 items fixed. We have AirCon again, cabin lights, working showers, running fridges, can charge our batteries. Hopefully Raymarine and Yanmar work will happen in the next two weeks, which will knock off another 30 items or so. The rest then depends on what else we find and how many additional cycles are needed.
After the initial shock we have worked hard to get back into a normal routine. The homeschool is running, kids get to go to the pool in the afternoon and meet friends. We have even reclaimed Sundays as non-working days. We’re trending up! 🙂
Rainbow Safari 