Powerless

Last Friday at 8 AM, the power went off. That happens periodically here in Abaco, and our apartment runs off the marina's generator. However, that day the power never went back on! There was a cooling pump failure at the main power plant which caused a complete system shut down of all power, and of course there is no back up pump! All the islands have been running on the other 12 MW generating plant since then, but it can't handle the load, so we have been dealing with load sharing and shedding. This means 2 hours with power, and 4 hours without.

A similar 12MW Generator

Thank goodness we can rely on our back up generator here during the off times, although we do leave it off during the night. We figure the 2 hours on will keep our fridge and the marina's ice maker and coolers cold enough to cover the other 4 hours.

Bahamas Power and Light has been giving updates on their Facebook page, but most of their schedules have not been accurate. It also gave the information that the part (along with a spare) that weighs 3000 lbs., had to be transported from Arizona to Texas and a special plane was to bring it to Abaco last night. Today they said it didn't arrive because of weather issues in Texas (which some readers looked up and found there was no bad weather). Now they say tomorrow it will arrive. One rumor is that the parts need to come from Germany!

Meanwhile, today's power outage was longer than normal and we only had one hour on before it was off again. This is causing havoc with all those people that don't have back up generators, and the island is packed with tourists right now with spring break. A friend of ours who just arrived the day before this all began, has no generator, and everything in her fridge has spoiled including medications. We are so lucky not to have to worry about that, and Dave has been making sure the oil, fuel, and coolant is full on 'our' generator, so it continues to run flawlessly. You can imagine how thankful the managers are here, since it's one less thing they have to worry about. The fuel dock has been extra busy with business, resort, and home owners bringing in jerry cans for diesel and gas for their generators. In fact we are the only place to buy diesel on the island and everyone has to come across the harbor to fuel up! In fact, as I am writing this, the fuel tanker is pulling into the dock to fill up the marina's tanks.

To add insult to injury everyone who has BTC cellphones say that they don't work because there is no back up generator on island that runs the cell tower! Luckily we have a new ALIV phone and have service including internet.

For now we are keeping our fingers crossed that this dilemma doesn't last too long, but we keep our flashlights close at hand, since we never know when the lights will go off. When they do go off, we listen to all the individual generators in the settlement drone on...and I'm glad I don't mind the smell of diesel exhaust fumes! It reminds me of being back on board New Horizon, sitting in the harbor and laughing at the landlubbers that have to worry about dealing with all the outages. 😉