On The Hard, Sensibulbs & Stray Current
Elizabeth was hauled out the other day. I’m storing down the road a bit. So Elizabeth got to go for another short ride on wheels. She’s quite the traffic stopper. Total cost for haul, wash, delivery and winter storage is $1344.
Unfortunately, it looks as though I have some electrical issues aboard Elizabeth. She has been in the water for only 5 or 6 weeks, but her shaft zincs are in frighteningly horrible condition after such a short time. This, together with my unexplained battery voltage decrease over the course of a few days points heavily towards some stray current, a live wire, a poor ground somewhere it shouldn’t be. I’m by no means ‘clue-full’ with regard to electrics, so this will be a fun learning experience for me. Necessity is the mother of learning.
A possibly related issue: when my lower bilge pump is in the manual position, the pump works much better. When in the auto position, the pump runs slower and doesn’t have the power to suck and push the water up and out. Perhaps a leak at the float switch…
On a lighter note (pun intended), I picked up a Sensibulb to give it a try in one of my bunk lights. I have the old Edison style socket, and Sailor Solutions had the adapter for that socket, so it was all too easy. I’m in agreement with every review I’ve ever read of these bulbs… they provide bright, warm light. I suppose you get what you pay for, however much that hurts.
Ben,
FYI – Not sure if you have checked out the BCC site of the Japanese team sailing a BCC from Japan that was linked to on the SLM site. They rebuild their bobstay fitting and it seems to look similar to your design. If you scroll down on the link below you can see some pics of what they did. I wonder if the site can be translated in Babelfish or something. Anyway, I thought you might find it interesting.
KD
http://aeolus.exblog.jp/blog.asp?iid=&acv=&dif=&opt=2&srl=5843501&dte=2007-07-08 20:31:17.000
Hi Ben,
The rapid erosion of your zincs is scary alright. Although your bilge pump switch does sound like it needs attention, I wonder if AC problems on the dock where you were tied up aren’t a more likely cause. If a neighboring boat was plugged in to shore power and had some poor wiring aboard, I’ve read that current can flow from that boat, through the sea water, to your boat, eating up zincs quickly and even going on to eat up any exposed metals! This happened to a friend’s boat some yrs ago, and the thru-hulls were so far gone that the boat was in danger of sinking. The culprit was never identified.
Dan sv shaula
@ Dan:
I was tied up at a Marina for about a week since then, the boat has been on a mooring. Didn’t take a look at the zincs before leaving the marina. I’ll run some tests, and examine all my wires, that’s the best I can do at this point I guess. Thanks for the insight.
@ KD:
I do follow the Aeolus site, lots of pics… which is the way I prefer to «read» anyways! The translation tool I found is useless. Didn’t see the new bobstay fitting, but did see their Freehand style self steering trim tab, that had bolt holes in the rudder that looked alot like my bobstay fitting bolt holes…maybe that was what you were referring to???
Hey are you coming up to Boston to get your Christmas presents or what?
P.S. Hit me up on the IM!