Battery blues 2
'Sarf & West mate, Sarf & West'
Pete Bernfeld
Fri 12 Jul 2013 22:18
I've moved closer to shore. Previously it was 0.6nm to the yacht club and being an idle swine I was dependent on Calypso for a lift. Now I'm a couple of hundred metres (if that) which is a row-able row. Beaching remains on the agenda for next week for a bottie-scrub and a look-see, although I'm not hopeful of spotting where the main leak is.
I've now separated all the batteries. The good news is the starter battery on the 'live' engine is fine. The bad news is all the rest! So far two out of the three 200A/H house batteries fail to hold a charge overnight whilst under a small load. I have yet to test the third one, at the moment it's coping well operating the bilge pump every couple of hours. The next step is to borrow Calypso's hydrometer and find out the state of the individual cells, not that there's much I can do about a shot cell, or so I believe.
Bearing in mind financial constraints, the plan is to use the second starter battery (70A/H) as a house battery. The overnight loads are 2A/H for the radio, a small amount for the nav lights (now non-LED regrettably) and of course the autopilot. If one of the house batteries is better I may connect it with the 'new' house battery. To add insult to injury the 'emergency elektrikery' has gone U/S. The petrol engine works fine but the alternator side of the show won't come on line. That's a visit to a mechanic next week then.
Funny how the money just evaporates, isn't it?_
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