TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums St. Maarten - St. Martin Fun on the Causeway

We plan on posting a full trip report when we finish up our trip in mid June, but this was too good not to share.

We were headed to Hertz this morning from Simpson Bay with a little car problem and decided to head across the Causeway to fill the car up in case they swapped us out. Coming back across the causeway at 10am, the bridge opened for it's normal routine. Well it didn't close for a while and then a walker came back down the walkway telling everone to turn around because the bridge operator announced that Gebe cut power off for an hour and the bridge couldn't close.

Kind of funny now, but what a cluster F. The bridge was jammed and everyone had to try to do a U-turn over the divider or back all the way down (which we did). We ended up going back through Marigot and the Low Lands. The Cole Bay route was a parking lot.

Got to love GEBE.

Scuba--Yup, GEBE manages to screw up everything.

Jim & Laraine Glad you were able to work around it.

At least the power has not gone off at the Condo today, Jim and Loraine, YET!!

I ran into the same problem. Was going to Ace Hardware in Cole Bay but had to go back home to Maho. Ended going later in the afternoon.

There have been numerous outages in the three weeks we have been here. As Dr.Phil said earlier, La Terrasse has a generator so not a major problem for us.

Same here at the Flamingo. Out for less than a minute and generator kicks on.

But, even if your resort has a generator all these power outages are NOT good for equipment at resorts, as folks at Royal Islander found out, when the power surge blew out their a/c! GEBE sucks.

I think that all depends on the type of surge protection the generator has. My generac at home has one built in.

I wasn't referring just to the generator, but all kinds of other electric appliances, etc. As I understand it, the a/c unit ITSELF was damaged, not the generator.

@Carol - that is what happened, the A/C unit itself was damaged a couple of weeks back. What often happens is a "brown out" where the supply voltage drops (e.g. only 90V instead of the 110V expected). Since the devices want to draw the same amount of power, the system supplies more amperes to make up for the difference. And Ohm's law (Voltage = current * resistance) comes into play and suddenly the wiring in the devices that is limited to a certain number of amps carries a lot more than it was designed for and starts to heat up. Brown outs can cause fires and equipment failure.

Thanks Zanshin.

I hear you but a properly installed generator will have surge safeguards

@SXMScubaman - how long have you been around SXM ? When I hear the words "properly installed" in the islands they are usually accompanied by a negation of some sort in the same sentence. But in this case the generator didn't have a problem, the A/C compressors did. Probably a severe brownout and before the generator could kick in the amperage in the A/C compressor blew coils/windings/capacitors and required an expensive repair.

Scuba--you did not read what Zanshin said. The generator did not fail, the A/C compressors did. His previous note explained it very well.

And I didn't say the Generator failed. The surge protector, if installed correctly, didn't protect the compressor adequately.

Surge Protection and Undercurrent Protection are two different things.

As usual, you got it wrong, the Flux Capacitor failed.

Exactly.

Alrighty then. Let's move on.