Today was the big day to reinstall the second UPS at the office/studio. On the way into the office, I noticed that one ship, Oceana, was already docked and Grandeur of the Seas was coming in and about a hundred meters from the dock. (See Virginia’s blog for more details)

Tourists blocking the road going into town and these are just from the one ship not seen in this photo

After devotions, Joe and I finalized plans for the transfer of certain loads back onto the second UPS. The FM transmitter was on the air, so we decided to shut down briefly and temporarily transfer the necessary equipment onto one of the smaller UPSs received on Monday. This would ease the rush to make the other transfers.

When the second UPS had been moved to the site, all of its vital UPS loads had to be connected to the first UPS. This required temporarily jumpering the wiring between the load centers for the two UPS units. Now we needed to return all this wiring to its original configuration.

The rather large sailing vessel is dwarfed by the cruise ships!

It was possible to do this without shutting down power to the Intelsat (satellite communications) equipment. All the Intelsat connections were on the right side of the load center of the ‘live’ UPS. By leaving the UPS running, shutting off all the breakers on the left side, and covering up the ‘hot’ feed at the top of the load center, it was possible to work on the left side without fear of getting a shock. All the temporary jumpers were connected to the left side, so we pulled them out (loads and neutrals) one-by-one and connected them back to their previous positions in the other load center, This transfer work took about an hour to complete.

That being completed, we fired up the second UPS and put it on line. After everything was verified as functioning properly, the FM was briefly shut down to restore everything to ‘normal’. Now for a sight of relief that this was done!

After lunch, I turned my attention to the smaller UPS that had failed at the site some months ago. Since it would cost more to repair it, than it cost to purchase the new units, it was decided to salvage the batteries, which are identical to the ones in the larger UPS.

Also since the larger UPSs are the same brand as the smaller failed one, there are a lot of parts the two sizes have in common. I next stripped these parts out of the smaller unit to be saved as spare parts for the larger ones. This included some of the screws that I had noticed were missing, or mismatched, on the covers of the large UPS. The rest of the unit will be scrapped. Now to find a box in which to store these parts that will fit on the same shelf as the other stocked parts.

Joe wanted to more evenly distribute all the electrical loads in the building for better loading on the standby generator when it is needed. We noticed that phase 1 had about a 20% higher loading than the other two and decided that the UPSs should be on the other two. Initially UPS(A) was on phase 1 and UPS (B) was on phase 2. There is a slight difference in the loading of the two UPSs which was also used to help balance the loads. We ended up with UPS(A) on phase 2 and UPS(B) on phase 3. With this arrangement there was less than 5% difference between all phases.

Earlier in the day, Benny had mentioned that the motion sensor at the transmitter site had not ‘seen’ him when he ‘disarmed’ the system yesterday. After work, Virginia and I prepared for a swim at Bachelor Beach (it is Friday night and Divi Flamingo Beach is full of partiers).

On the way, we went by the transmitter site to return some parts and to check out the motions sensor. It worked, but could probably be more sensitive. Will have to check to see if there is any adjustment on it.

Grandeur of the Seas leaving about 4:30 pm

We noticed that the United Tenorio was gone from the Salt Pier. For the past two or three days there has been a large ship hanging off shore a mile or two. It looks like it may be an oil tanker waiting for a berth at BOPEC.

We started our swim at Bachelor Beach (I think we used to call it Lime Beach) just about sunset and was able to watch the Oceana leave headed for Aruba. The Grandeur of the Seas had departed about 4:30.

When we got out of the water at Bachelor Beach, the mosquitoes attacked in mass. It was so bad, that I didn’t bother to put on my shoes and socks to get to our car. My feet hurt from walking on the coral, but the mosquitoes felt worse. I guess no more late swims there!