It's Keith writing this blog entry for a change. I think Gail might be out house shopping as she has had just about enough of the boat demons and ridiculous string of bad luck. I can't blame her. I'm just lucky she is not out consulting with an attorney to see if you can divorce your husband due to bad boat JuJu.
So to continue our story, we arrived in Port Washington, NY on Sunday night. Monday morning we were hoping to run 20 miles to South Norwalk, CT to pick up our dinghy that was being repaired. When we went to start the boat on Monday, we had dead batteries. Not surprising since we had to get Towboat US to jump start us on Sunday. Now it was time to troubleshoot the issue and fix the problem.
Calls to Capt Dave Hawley, Capt Pete Walton and James Taylor at Atlantic Yacht Basin, got me going to start to track down potential problems with the batteries. Recall that these Port side starting batteries are brand new. They were just placed into the boat on June 10th. After talking with my support team I got out the multi-meter and started to check voltage across terminals and battery connections. We finally discovered that the two brand new starting batteries on the Port Engine were not reading any voltage. After a series of tests, we determined that the jumper cable that connects the two 12-volt batteries together to make 24 volts did not have continuity. Meaning that the wire was bad.
I pulled the wire off the batteries and headed up to the local boatyard hoping to find a replacement. The yard service manager took a look at the cable and was able pull one of the terminal ends off. The terminal had never been crimped onto the wire. Five minutes later, the yard manager crimps the terminal onto the wire, tests for continuity and now we should be good to go. Finally an easy fix.
I get back to the boat and reinstall the jumper wire. I check voltage across the terminals and PRESTO, we have a good battery reading 26.5 volts. A fully charged set of batteries. Hallelujah!
I put the boat back together and tell Gail to get ready to shove off. I go to start the Starboard engine and NOTHING. Dead battery. Crap! Again, not surprising since we had basically been paralleling the good battery on the Starboard side to the Port battery to get the engines started. The continuous use of the Starboard battery drained it to the point that it was no longer serviceable. So that ends the day. We need two new starting batteries for the Starboard engine now.
I decided to go ahead and try to start the Port engine just to make sure that the newly crimped cable is working as we expect. I hit the key and the Port engine fires off perfectly. GREAT! Finally something goes right, or so we think. I turn off the Port engine. Gail says, "Hey, the engine is still running." I am at the helm and know the engine is off. She tells me to come back into the salon and listen.
Sure enough, the engine is off, but I can hear the starting motor on the engine is engaged. I run down to the engine room and cut power off to the port batteries which stops the starting motor. I am hoping the starter just got stuck for a second and try to start the motor again from down in the engine room this time. I turn the battery switch back on and crank the motor. The motor fires off perfectly, but I can hear the starting motor is staying engaged. I turn the key off and then run to the battery switch and cut the power to stop the motor. Crap, we have a bad starter or a bad solenoid. At this point a new string of curse words is heard across the marina.
So, we fix one problem, the Port batteries, and create two more problems, 1) Batteries for the Starboard Engine and 2) Stuck solenoid on the Port starting motor.
I head back up to the boatyard office and talk to the service manager. I ask him to order me two new starting batteries and to see if he can help with the starter. He says no problem, he will get someone down to the boat. Of course, no one shows up. By 3PM I decided that if we are ever going to get out of here I will need to take matters into my own hands and fix these problems.
I start to research new starting motors. I call my contact at Caterpillar for the price and availability of a new starter. It's only $1,400. Crap. The CAT parts manager tells me I can get a remanufactured starter for $880. That is still a lot of money. I start to cross reference the part number on the Internet and find a compatible starter in RTP, NC on Amazon for $234. BINGO. I call the shop in NC and they have one in stock and can ship it to me overnight. Perfect.
Now I go about getting the bad starter off of the Port engine. Really not too bad of a job. Fortunately, I had the right sockets and tools to remove the starter. It took about an hour or so, but I got it off with only a couple of busted knuckles and some sweat. Now I am just waiting for the new starter to arrive to bolt it back onto the engine and reconnect all the wires.
Next I move onto the batteries. I start researching those on the internet. Problem with the batteries is that no one can send them overnight. They weight 170 lbs each and I need two of them. They will only ship them ground freight which will take 3 to 5 days. That is not going to work.
I decide to find the local Lifeline Battery dealer. I figure I can get a taxi to go get them if they are in stock. Guess what? The local Lifeline Battery dealer is the marina where I am staying. I walk back up to the boatyard office and ask the receptionist if they had ordered the batteries I asked them to order at 10:00 in the morning. She said no, she places all the orders and Tim, the yard manager, had not told her to order them. I tell her that I need to have those batteries tomorrow. She placed the order while I am standing there and tells me that they will definitely have them tomorrow.
Based on the lack of help I am receiving from the boatyard, I figure even if the batteries come in tomorrow, I might not be able to get anyone to help me remove the old batteries and install the new ones. Remember, these are not car batteries. These batteries are huge and weigh 170 lbs each. They cannot be moved by one person and two guys struggle to do it.
Now the fun part, how do I get the old batteries out of the cabinet in the engine room? Gail and I brainstorm. I call Capt Dave and send him pictures of the layout and we talk through some options. Gail and I continue to discuss bouncing ideas off of each other. We come up with several possibilities, but they all have down side potential of dropping the batteries on our air conditioning system. With our luck, we will break our A/C and really be screwed. We finally decide that we really need to build a ramp to move the batteries. It is really the safest and only option.
We keep looking around the boat to find anything that might serve this purpose. We try Gail's sewing table, too big. We try a folding cocktail table we have stowed in the engine room, too small. Just as we are about to give up, I stumble across the fiberglass bench seat to our dinghy. I removed it and stowed it when we took the dinghy in for repair a few weeks back.
This bench seat is absolutely perfect. It is sturdy, long enough, and will support the weight of the batteries. In ten minutes we were able to slide both batteries out of the cabinet, over the air conditioning units onto our Yeti cooler that was acting as a step down to get the batteries out of the cabinet. All I can say is that there is a special place in heaven for Gail. She hung in there with me and we worked through the problems. I was going to move the battery myself off of the cooler to the floor, but she would have none of it. She wanted to grab one end of the battery and help me move it to the floor. She said if she could wrestle 100 lbs dogs that were trying to bite her as a Veterinarian, that a stupid battery was not going to be too much for her. So she grabbed one end and me the other and down to the floor the old batteries went; easy peazy. This country girl had muscles from bailing hay and picking up dogs. She is some kind of tough and I thank God for her!
The new batteries arrived as promised on Tuesday morning around 10:30 am, June 25th. We got the old batteries out of the engine room and lowered the new batteries down in. We just reversed the process and picked the battery up from the floor of the engine room onto the cooler, then onto the "ramp" (dinghy seat), and slide it over the air conditioning system and onto the battery shelf. It only took us about 20 minutes. Then with another 15 minutes to hook up all the cables, we were ready to see if the starboard engine would start unassisted. Turn the key and.... it fired right off. No problem. Yeah! One problem solved, one more to go.
The new starter arrived from FedEx at 2:04 pm. I got over to the boatyard office as fast as I could. I paid for the new starting batteries ($2,143) and picked up my new starter. (The bank account is definitely getting lighter) Then it was back to the boat and I was in the engine by 2:30 starting to install the new starter motor with Gail's help.
The new starter was not set up exactly like the old one so it required a bit of tweaking before it could be bolted back on. Once we had it configured correctly, we set off to get it bolted in and all the wires connected. By 3:45 PM, the moment of truth had arrived. Everything was in, wires connected and it "looked" good. I was about to start the engine and see if I passed remedial mechanic school. Gail and I both said a little prayer and crossed our fingers.
The key was turned on and the motor fired off. Wait for it... no whining from the starter. It was fixed! Our luck had to change. We finally caught a break. We now have a fully functional boat with two working engines ready to take us to distant places and more FUN adventures.
Gail and I are looking forward to the best night of sleep we have had in a month. Tomorrow we go to pick up our dinghy across Long Island Sound and then we head north to rendezvous with our friends on our way to Maine. Lobster, here we come!
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