Sorry for our delayed response. Once our nightmare of repairing the
electric was behind us, both the Admiral and I were eager to set sail for the open sea.
We sailed to St. Barts, then St. Kitts, St
Nevis and arrived in
Antigua.
Electric winch worked great the rare times we used it. More importantly, we learned the circuit breaker for our
watermaker is the same one used for the electric winch. What idiot installed it this way I don't know, but that is a
project for the future. Not only were we without an electric winch, which I can live without,
water on the other hand is a no go decision.
After a
electrical engineer and I worked for an hour, we were finally able to remove the chartplotter. My first words were "OH S---!!!!
We found immediately to the left of the chartplotter a solid thick
fiberglass bulkhead support. Absolutely no access to the electric winch
motor or control box. Back to the cabinets. Three, that is three hours of solid
work, sawing out
panels and dismantling
parts of the cabinets, we were finally able to gain access to remove the control box. It is a simple
Harken windlass box, no big deal except the
price Harken charges. A quick
dinghy trip to IWW, $178 later we were back onboard our
boat. The
engineer replaced our broken unit in less than 30 minutes. Reinstalled our chartplotter and siliconed everything back in including the foot switch for the electric winch. Total time on
project by vendor 5 1/2 hours for $357 and three diet cokes.
IMHO, this is a significant design flaw by
Lagoon. These
parts require
maintenance and/or replacement every 3-5 years if not more. My control box lasted two years!
The
route we choose, is least destructive to our
boat and ensured maintaining a watertight
environment. For those of you who face a similar problem I hope you find our experience and post helpful.
All
boats have flaws. Some worse then others. I can live with this one, but it seems a fairly simple and not costly fix by
Lagoon. Hopefully, they ask Ikea to make some minor alterations providing access
panels to this
equipment.