Electrickery
Ile Jeudi
Bob and Lin Griffiths
Mon 11 Feb 2013 18:49
|
Saturday 9 to Monday 11 February 2013
The guys who built the marina here have been
very creative to provide the only marina in the Cape Verde islands. The
pontoons are not held in place by piles driven into the ground but
are held by cables tied to the seabed. The boats are tied at one end
to mooring lines fixed to the seabed and to the pontoons at the other.
This works well and the only disadvantage is that in strong winds and big
swells the pontoons are not as well restrained as they would be on piles.
These were the conditions we had on Saturday
and it was causing the pontoons to move around rather a lot. The
marina staff were checking lines and on our pontoon tied two sections together
with a block and tackle as they had been breaking apart. There
were a couple of power outages during the day which they believe was caused by
one boat's shorepower cable being severed during all the movement. On
Saturday afternoon they got the electricity back on and our RCB switch
tripped immediately accompanied by a sort of 'woomph' sound. There was
also a strongish electrical type smell. We've had the switch trip before
of course but not with sound effects and scent.
At sea we have various methods of charging the
batteries and one is to run the generator to produce AC to run
the battery charger. Unless we find out why the switch was tripping this
method would not be available to us. We wanted to know whether we had
a problem with the trip switch, or whether another circuit on board was now
damaged and causing the trip. It turns out several boats had problems and the
marina Captain established that we were all on the same phase of the three phase
electrical supply. This helped them identify a further issue which they
resolved on Sunday during the afternoon. But unfortunately we
couldn't turn the supply on without the switch tripping and it seemed we now had
a problem on board.
Sadly three boats had damage to their battery
chargers, one had blown two 250 amp fuses and another boat discovered that their
batteries were 'cooked' and now had warped plates, thought to
be caused by damage to the charger control unit. Kai Brossman, one of
the marina owners, spent a lot of Monday with several boat owners to try to
establish the extent of the problems. He, together with other electricians
visited most of the effected boats to resolve as much as they
could.
Whilst we were waiting for the marina's electrician
to visit (he was rather busy!), Mick, an electrical engineer and the owner of
Running Tide, our neighbouring boat, offered to come and have a look. This
offer was gratefully accepted and we disconnected all the mains circuits off the
back of the switch plus the inputs from the shorepower and generator. With
everything off the RCB then seemed mechanically OK. We then
reconnected each circuit in turn to see which one was causing the trip.
Thankfully the battery charger circuit was fine and one by one each of the other
circuits was reconnected and..... none of them caused the RCB to trip any
longer. We were eventually joined by the marina electrician who agreed
with the approach and he stayed until it was all done. So, the problem
seems to be resolved now but we don't fully understand why. David (my
brother who knows about these things) might have some views? Anyway, we
were most grateful to Mick and Peder from Running Tide and also to Cesar from
the marina for looking after us.
In the meatime I had been for an X-Ray on
my foot on Monday morning. After a much shorter wait than most of us
are accustomed to they did two X-Rays and confirmed that there were no
foreign bodies left in the foot. Good news and the chance of reinfection
at sea is somewhat minimised!
Mick (on the right) and Peder, our
saviours:-
 Running Tide departing for Grenada:-
 |