I had left Serenity in Key West for 7 weeks, but she's secure on a mooring and the wind generator would keep the batteries charged up quite well.
As can be seen in the photo above, this is what I found when I arrived on the boat. It appears a couple of bolts that help secure the generator to the top of the pole had worked their way loose and the wind generator had come off and in the process broke one of the blades. This must have happened a few weeks ago (or more) because the batteries on the boat were in the 11 volt range.
You can see in this photo of Serenity in her slip - where the wind generator is on the boatSerenity has a 'house bank' of batteries that consist of 4 deep cycle 6 volt batteries which make up around 600 amps of storage. There's a separate engine starting battery that is isolated from the house bank and devoted only to starting the engine. Both banks were down in the 11 volt range which makes me think that possibly the wind generator problem occurred not long after I left the boat in November. I went online and read that a battery can lose enough charge to not be able to start an engine after 6 weeks of neglect.
Had I been able to start the engine, I could have easily charged the house bank back up with the engine.
It as early afternoon when I arrived at the boat and the wind was blowing 10-15, so since I had an extra set of blades on the boat, I decided to change out the blades quickly and let the generator try to put enough charge into the battery to start the engine. One of the many nice touches of Serenity is that I can direct the charge of the wind generator to any combination of the batteries on the boat.
I took the wind generator down and took the blades off. Unfortunately, the design of the generator is such that you really need a good workbench or an extra set of hands to be able to get the new blades back on. Considering myself a bit of a McGyver, I fabricated a new tool to hold the nyloc nuts in place behind the mounting plate and after a few tries and a few hours was able to get the new blades on and the wind generator back in place. Unfortunately, it was late in the day and wind had calmed down.
The repaired wind generatorSo, I called Tow BoatUS (which I'm a member with) and had them come out and 'jump start' the boat. I let the engine run for 3 hours to charge the batteries up and simultaneously heat up the water in the water heater for the morning shower the next day.
Serenity is such a great boat. I've always bragged about how 'dry' the boat is. I never get any water intrusion into the boat. Another great thing about the boat is the bilge pump counter that's mounted at the electronics panel. It basically keeps a digital count of the number of times the bilge pump comes on. For those that dont know, the bilge is the lowest spot on any boat. When there's water entering the boat at any place, it always runs down into the bilge. If I had leaky hatch or port, the water from it would run down and gather in the bilge. If any through-hull fitting would have a slight leak - the water would run into the bilge. For this reason, all boats have at least one pump down in this low spot - to pump water overboard. Most boats have an automatic one and a manual one. Serenity came with an automatic one and a manual one PLUS I later installed a 'backup' automatic one slightly higher than the primary, so in case there were a failure of the primary, the backup would kick in.
So basically, for the entire time I was gone from Serenity -the bilge pump did not come on - meaning there was no intrusion of water into the boat. Luckily, the bilge pump will work all the way down to 8 volts and even though the batteries would not start the engine, I turned the pump on manually when I came onto the boat and it pumped like normal. I love how dry the boat is. It's real 'plus' on a boat.
I'll be heading back down to the boat between some races and sometime this spring, I'll bring it back home and into the it's slip in Daytona Beach.
No comments:
Post a Comment