Electrified!

This project is one of those that illustrates how something simple leads to complications. It started with having to replace my batteries. This did not come as a surprise. They are five years old and had been weak for a while. When I was out sailing, a battery would hold up for about 30 minutes with instruments and radio turned on. I had to switch to the second battery to restart the engine. Not good!

Finally, one of the two would not charge at all. I replaced both of the batteries with gel cell, sealed batteries at about $250 apiece. Gel cell batteries can be ruined by charging them as if they were old style flooded, lead/acid batteries so that means buying and installing a new battery charger that will not kill my expensive new batteries. I had never paid much attention to how battery chargers were supposed to work. I assumed that they just supplied electricity at a specified voltage and the batteries charged until they matched the voltage level. Not so - at least if I want my batteries to last. The charger has to supply three different voltages based on the state of charge and the battery type.

Who knew?

I have been aware of the horrible state of the boat's wiring but I have managed to push it off as something to deal with - someday - maybe. Well, the time has come for redoing at least part of the wiring - the part from the batteries to the main buss.  All in all, it took about three days' work to get the rewiring done and the new charger installed.

When the moment came to fire up the new charger, I was relieved to see that it appeared to work properly - no fire, no smoke and the readings concerning battery levels were as expected. I left the system to charge the batteries to normal level and by the next morning, both batteries showed full charge.

As a test to verify that the system would charge at maximum rate, I turned the charger off, selected battery 1 as the one to carry all the DC loads, planning to drain the battery to a low level. After about 30 minutes, battery 2 showed that its voltage had dropped to a level that usually means the battery is depleted or is under heavy load. Very curious given that the battery was not (or wasn't supposed to be) under any load at all. I turned the charger back on and the battery came back to normal level in about 30 minutes. Today, I am retrying the experiment putting the DC loads on battery 2. In about 20 minutes, the voltage dropped to a level indicating recharging was necessary. A little later, the voltage was back up into the level indicating that it was not fully charged but was above the recharging level. Battery 1 shows fully charged.

What does this mean?

So - it remains to be seen whether or not there really is a problem. Maybe the battery is acting strangely because it was previously charged by the old charger. Maybe it will act normal if I let it discharge significantly and then recharge it using the proper charging profile.

Stay tuned...

The new project is a full boat cleaning and inventory. I will be starting at the pointy end and working aft taking everything out of its normal place, scrubbing down and cleaning up the boat and the removed items. Some things will not be put back. My needs are changing now that I am not living the conventional work-day life.

Also in the near future - I have put out requests for quote on replacing the standing rigging - the wires that hold the masts up. I hope to have that done in the next couple of weeks. It means a sailing trip to a yard in north bay and back.