|
|
|
|
|||||
|
||||||
From: Garrett Lambert (no email)
Date: Wed Apr 11 2007 - 22:40:01 EDT
After the haul-out, the boat spent yesterday at at the visitors' dock, so I
decided to put the batteries - probably about 5 years old - on the
"Equalize" cycle. When I went back 8 hours later the boat was full of acrid
fumes from off-gassing. Since this was the first time I had done this
procedure, I wasn't aware of what the fumes implied. I aired the boat out,
and set the inverter to the normal charge cycle. When I went back this
morning to take the boat on the 3 hour trip back to its home dock, both the
house and start batteries were completely flat. I used the generator to
start the engine, and set out with the generator turned off. A couple of
hours later, I checked the panel again and everything was normal with the
batteries showing absolutely full charge.
Illusory happiness.
Just as I started to turn into my slip, everything on the boat just shut
down, including the engine and thruster. I was extraordinarily lucky in that
I was in a very difficult situation, drifting out of control with a lot of
expensive fiberglass very close at hand. Had the shut-down occurred a few
seconds earlier, there would have been some serious insurance claims. My
first instinct was to drop the anchor, it was held fast by the immobile
winch - no power - and I couldn't move it. The boat was pushed past the slip
by the light breeze, but breasted into an inflatable dinghy long enough for
me to jump to the dock with a line, and hold on until someone came to help.
Only because the slip with which mine shares was empty, between us, we were
able to manouver the boat into place and tie it up with absolutely no damage
to anything. This was little short of miraculous.
Then I went aboard and looked at the panel again. The "AC IN" LED showing
"Fault" and was solid red, as were the lower battery charge LED's. The best
explanation I've found so far is that the batteries were so close to the end
of their lives that equalizing simply killed them off. The fumes were
evidence of the degradation of the plates. The inverter sensed the absence
of charge in the battery banks, and went 'balls to the wall' as long as it
could to restore capacity. That caused it to overheat, so it shut itself
down. However, why there wasn't enough juice from the alternator with the
engine running at idle, I don't know, but the only way I can explain the
simultaneous engine shut-down is that the fuel pump cut out.
An electrician is coming to sort things out tomorrow and I'll report back.
Cheers, Garrett
_______________________________________________
http://lists.samurai.com/mailman/listinfo/trawlers-and-trawlering
To unsubscribe send email to
with the word
UNSUBSCRIBE and nothing else in the subject or body of the message.
Trawlers & Trawlering and T&T are trademarks of Water World
Productions. Unauthorized use is prohibited.
|