My friend Mark loves to say that “everything on your boat is broken you just don’t know it yet”.
That is so true an on just about every passage something important breaks.
A belt, water pump and more things than I can count have given up the ghost on passage and on our first day out, Pandora acted true to form.
Yesterday after a days of preparation, we dropped our lines and headed out, bound for Gibraltar.
As expected, there was very little wind so we had to motorsail for about the first 18 hours and finally, about dawn today the wind picked up enough to sail sans engine. Well, at least some of the time.
On passage I carefully log information every few hours about boat speed, wind speed, location and other stats that help me keep track of how things are going. I also log the battery status so that if anything unusual happens I will see it. Is the solar keeping up with the loads, is the engine charger working well?
At midnight as I logged the numbers, I noticed that the battery charge was dropping even though the engine was running. That wasn’t right and it was clear that the alternator was not putting out power.
We tried several tests to confirm that indeed the engine was not charging the batteries.
I have an alarming number of spare parts assuming that “everything is broken” and along with a spare for every pump on the boat, I carry a spare high output alternator,
It has been sitting in storage for seven years just waiting for the “old” one to fail and it did last night.
So, at midnight I turned off the engine, now 175 degrees, and carefully removed the very hot alternator. The entire process took more than two hours but I got it back together.
We turned on the engine, held our breath, and NOTHING… No charging at all. Same problem.
Ok, now what. I took a deep breath, checked everything again looked all around and discovered one tiny wire that was not attached. I plugged it in. Started the engine and… still nothing.
We turned off the engine again and I scratched my head…
Not ready to give up we started the engine again. This time I waited longer and much to my surprise the power slowly came up to full charging, more than 100 amps at 24v.
What happened? I had forgotten that on a big alternator the voltage regulator is designed to “spool up” the load slowly to minimize the shock to the system and I had forgotten that.
Problem solved and after two hot hours working on the engine, problem solved…
Now I will take the old alternator and have it tested to see if it has indeed failed and if so, have it rebuilt.
I am not absolutely certain that the old one failed or if there might be a wire somewhere that was jostled during the “repair” and now works.
The point is that aboard Pandora “everything is broken you just don’t know it yet”.
Yes, Mark is right and like him, I keep a LOT of spare parts aboard, just in case.
Of course, if I was to carry spare parts for literally everything there would not be any room for us so all I can do is to carry parts that seem “likely to break” and hope for the best.
I do not know what I would have done if I did not have a spare alternator to charge the batteries but I do have a small Honda generator and that would have helped at least a bit. And, of course, we have solar panels and a wind generator…
All better now.
Well at least until I discover another part of Pandora that needs fixing.
Let’s just hope that I have a spare…
It was a long night but all is forgotten, thanks to having a spare and a beautiful sunrise.
Oh yeah, as I write this the wind continues to be fickle so the engine, now charging happily, is off for a bit and then on again.
We have to keep moving with about 850 miles to go even a half not difference in boats speed will mean a difference of 12 hours of passage time to Gibraltar.