We spent the day getting Leu Cat seaworthy so we could motor over to the other side of Prickly Bay tomorrow morning to have our head sail furling system installed. Mary Margaret and I unwrapped and removed our head sail so the rigger could immediately get to the head stay and the old furling system, then we carefully folded the head sail to prevent any rips or tears from happening. Next we moved over to the stern where we dropped the dinghy and lowered the outboard from its stand on the stern rail onto the dinghy. We then installed the fuel tank, connected it to the outboard and fired it up. It started on the first pull and purred like a kitten. However, it did smoke a lot for a while as it burned off the oil I had injected into the cylinders to prevent any rust from forming while we were gone.

So far, so good. I then moved on to the windlass where I needed to install a new magnet into the base of its gypsy. A gypsy on a windlass is that part which engages the links of the anchor chain and moves the chain so that it can either raise or lower the anchor. The old magnet had rusted out and needed to be replaced. The chain counter uses that magnet to mark each turn the gypsy makes, translating the number of turns into feet of chain being pulled in or pulled out. If the chain counter does not detect the magnet on each turn, the dumb thing stops working and shuts down the entire windlass. One would think that it would just stop measuring the amount of chain going up or down but still allow the gypsy to turn. Nope, not this one. It allows the gypsy to go around 4 times and then, if it does not detect the magnet during those revolutions, it shuts down the whole system. The result is you are left to raise or lower the anchor by hand. Grrrrrrrrr. I hate bad designs.

Once I had replaced the magnet and remounted the gypsy, I went to turn on the port engine. That engine needs to be on as it provides the electricity to the windlass. I turned on the key and … nothing happened. That was strange because I had left the battery switch on so that the shore power could keep the house batteries and both starter batteries fully charged.

I ran down to the guest suite and lifted the floor boards to inspect the port starter battery. Armed with my multi-meter I checked the starter battery’s volt and discovered that it was completely flat. The meter registered 0 volts. I applied the meter to one of the house batteries and it read 13.6 volts. Thus, I knew my meter was working. I then ran over to our suite on the starboard side of the boat and lifted the floor board that is over the starter batter for the starboard engine. It too read 0 volts. Hmmm, what was going on?

Having one starter battery go dead on you is something that happens once every 4 or 5 years. Having both go out on you at the same time is very uncommon and is highly suggestive of something else going on with the electrical system. I suspect that it has something to do with our battery charger/inverter. We know that it is in the process of failing and it was the source of a number of issues we had to deal with when we were crossing the Atlantic last fall.

When we stopped at Ascension Island the electrician there told us that the problems we were having sounded to him like one or more of the diodes in the battery charger had failed. This was the reason the charger was only putting out about half of the amps that it was supposed to. One of our fellow Lagoon 440 owners, John, the skipper of SV Orcinius, also emailed me saying that he had a similar problem with his Xantrex Freedom battery charger/inverter. He wrote: “more likely it has lost some of its capability to charge the batteries using a full wave rectified DC (i.e. lost part of its diodes and control for making DC) so it is half wave rectified. This is OK for the batteries and they will charge just fine but not so well for the Raymarine or any one else’s electronics. It is like feeding AC to a DC circuit.” Thus, based on John’s insight, I am betting that the problems we have had with our Raymarine chart plotter and with the Raymarine Fluxgate compass and the Raymarine autopilot were all tied to our failing Xantrex battery charger. It is sort of funny now that I look on it. The battery charger was failing, thus not charging the batteries as much as it should have, it was putting out a bad sine wave of electricity which make the Raymarine equipment go haywire which makes the hydraulic ram of the autopilot go wild, which increased the torque on the rudder’s quadrant pin, which eventually sheared off, leaving us with no way to steer the boat. We were so lucky that we were able to jimmy rig a way to remount the sheared off quadrant pin as it allowed us to sail Leu Cat the remaining 1500 nm we had to go to reach Grenada. Sheesh! It is amazing how tied in everything is and how much knowledge one needs to have to figure out what is the root cause of some seemingly unrelated problem.

To make a long story short, I have called the rigger and Spice Island Marina to say that I am delaying our trip over to them until all of this gets straighten out. I have a few ideas as to what the problem is but I want an electrician to come and inspect everything and tell me if I am right or, if I am wrong, then fix whatever is killing both batteries. I hope I will be in a position to let you know what the verdict is tomorrow….