July 19th - Doin' the Charleston


We pulled into the Charleston area early in the morning after an
absolutely
marvelous sail. Lydia had gone down to sleep after letting me sleep
longer
than the expected midnight change, and in return, I kept at it until
past
dawn and our entrance. That sleep deprivation would come back to
haunt me
later, as the out of sequence posting demonstrated a few days ago.

We got Larry on the phone and were directed to a special entrance we'd
missed both when looking at the electronic and paper charts of the
area. We
were also directed to the City Marina as necessary for us to
accomplish what
might be refrigeration repair (more difficult for a service person to
dinghy
out), electrical troubleshooting, instrument repairs and the like. As
much
as it's against my religion and our budget, we bit the bullet and
signed up
for the Franklin plus daily fees to be at the (very VERY long dock -
the
MegaDock, where the big guys park) end of the outside floating dock.

Larry had his hand-held VHF radio with him and was able to hear our
traffic
with the control for docking and thus was waiting for us when we
landed. We
quickly connected to shore power and commenced to troubleshooting
while
Lydia went off to discover who she'd chat up in THIS marina (if you
let her
off the boat, she's gone for hours, as there isn't anyone she meets
who
doesn't turn into a conversation, some of which involve geneology, let
alone
hail-fellow-well-met).

We quickly determined that we weren't getting nearly enough power to
the
batteries which appeared to be OK, but very low. Larry's first
supposition
was that the batteries were dead, but futher digging showed that the
charger
wasn't putting out anything like the 70 amps it was rated for. Out
come the
manuals and to cut it short, the charger and its controller were
fried,
literally (see gallery pix). So, the first order of business, as long
as
we're on someone else' (expensive - a surcharge of $6 per day)
electricity,
we need to get something to accelerate the charging, so it's off to
West
Marine. New charger installed, we're topping up the batteries.

To do our tests, we've turned on everything we can find to generate
lots of
load. If our charger is up to the task, it should shoulder all the
load and
have some left over. However, as we put all that we can find into
the
system's
load, it turns out that it's high enough to take all the charger has
to
offer. As it's a relatively small charger, that's not really
surprising -
we have lots of time when connected to regular 110V power, so it's not
worrying. However...

Then, while it's working, we check the alternator (the busy thing on
the
engine which is supposed to not only supply the electrical needs while
operating, but have lots left over to bring the battery up to cover
the
non-running times' consumption. We'd assumed we had high output
alternators
based on the markings on at least one of our spares. NOT! Just like
the
case marking sez, they're suitable for charging the starting battery,
and
nothing else. No wonder we've got low power. We've been assuming all
along
that our alternator was not only keeping up with the running load, but
could
easily cover other loads (like this computer!) as well. Instead,
we've been
steadily sucking out the supply, rendering us nearly bankrupt in power
terms. (You look at a boat's electrical system like income and
spending,
with the bank - except it can't be filled beyond a certain point -
supplying
the extra, such as drawing from your savings. We were making far less
than
we were spending, and our "bank account" - the battery bank - was
nearly
empty...)

It does its thing overnight - so, now it's the 20th. More working in
the
engine room. As it's cooled down a bit, I go in with one of the two
spare
alternators I have, and change it out, on the thought that perhaps the
one
which has been on the engine since we bought it was somehow
defective. Ever
hopeful, perhaps this one is 70 amps? Nope. Same basic output. If
we
load up everything possible at the same time, it's more than the
alternator
can supply, let alone fill the battery with the excess.

All this alternator testing makes for a very hot engine compartment,
and
heats the rest of the boat. Our marvelous extraction fans do a great
job of
pulling the hot air out of the engine room, but are awfully hungry for
electricity to feed them. As we're trying desperately to charge up
the
batteries, that's not a good thing. So, I continue to work on in the
heat.
Making it worse, I got only a few hours of sleep last night, as we
were up
until the wee hours. Tonight's no different - I was so out of it from
the
heat and lack of sleep that I posted our third day of the trip before
the
second!

So, we'll continue this saga at a later time. In the meantime, it's
been
great to actually meet the guy with whom we've been corresponding,
skyping
(internet telephone, with pictures, sometimes, even), phoning and
otherwise
picking his brain. Later, we'll do some basic touring, but save the
high
activity levels for our return trip when we're not trying to get to
NYC.

L8R

Skip

Morgan 461 #2
SV Flying Pig KI4MPC
See our galleries at www.justpickone.org/skip/gallery !
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