You can’t become complacent. The Atlantic won’t let you. If you let your guard down Poseidon or King Neptune will remind you whose backyard you are playing in.
Yesterday, to celebrate our halfway milestone we offered a tribute to both Poseidon and Neptune. A shot of rum over the port side for Poseidon, a shot of rum over the starboard side for Neptune, a brief request to each of them to grant us safe passage, then a shot for each of the crew. It was the only time we would take the bottle of 7 year Havana Club out of the locker until we arrived at our destination.
Our tributes offered to the gods must have been a little ‘light’ that day based on what happened later that night.
At O-Three-TwentyNine (0329am) we were woken by Kira yelling from the wheel that everything had gone out. Full electrical failure. No nav, no chartplotter, no radar, no autopilot, no marine instruments showing wind speed wind angle. Nada. Nothing. The boat had gone dark. It was rolling. We were going perhaps 8 kts. Wind was from somewhere behind us. Pitch dark. The only thing we could see inside the main cabin came from red floor LEDs that came on for two seconds and then went off for two seconds. You know, just like in those bad sci-fi movies when the hero slowly turns around just before the alien attacks and all the lights are blinking.
Everyone threw on their gear and headed up to the cockpit. A quick check revealed no damage to the boat. That meant we had time to diagnose what had happened to the main battery bank. I had checked the percentages myself on each of the three lithiums before hitting the hay, and all looked good. Plenty of electricity to run all the systems throughout the night. I checked again and this time all the batteries were near zero. Better get the generator on fast. I rushed down below into the bouncing dark main cabin with the red floor lights strobing away and couldn’t open the room that the generator. The door had slammed shut so hard it had tripped the little lock pin from the other side effectively locking us out!
With a toothpick from the galley I managed to push the lock pin back, opened the door and started the generator. It purred to life but no power was feeding to the batteries. Huh? Seriously? No time to waste I went back up to the cockpit and we started the main engine to try and charge the batteries using the alternator. This time it worked and about 10 minutes later we had all the systems back on line.
Phew!
LiFePo4 batteries are amazing. They can be discharged to zero volts without damage then recharged fully unlike AGM batteries. They are greedy beasts though and will suck as much electricity as they can get to charge themselves often beyond what the device supplying them the charge can deliver. When we started the generator the batteries were so low they said ‘gimme’ and the the generator said ‘nuh-huh’ popped a circuit breaker and then went back to bed.
The alternator on the main engine had special regulators on it so the batteries wouldn’t draw too much power and burn it out.
The app that read the percentage of charge reported it incorrectly and so we didn’t charge the batteries before nightfall.
Things happen at sea. The longer you are at sea the more chance of ‘stuff’ happening.
Would all of this have happened if I offered Poseidon a proper tribute and a full ration of rum? I will never know, but I will make sure it won’t be a ‘light’ pour in future!
