A goodnight's sleep and some R&R for the Crew
12 August 2016 | Santa Maria De Leuca
Skipper, NNW6, sunny
We spent today safely moored up in Santa Maria de Leuca - right on the tip of the 'heel' of Italy. The crew slept soundly after a pretty hard sail across the Adriatic and awoke to a sunny - but very windy - day. At the moment there is a big wearer system moving south east from the northern med, bringing winds between F7-8, which is very unseasonable. The longer range forecasts show it blowing out later on Saturday so our plan is to start our next leg tomorrow afternoon, which should see us in Sicily on Sunday evening.
Today was spent catching up and sorting out a number of issues. Will went up the mast again to replace a bulb in our masthead steaming light - the neighbours were once showing impressed with his mast climbing in pretty high winds (no recognition of the efforts from the winch turners though!) After this, the crew headed for the local beach, while the skipper was buried in the engine room trying to sort out a persistent battery overcharging problem that had, apparently been "fixed" by the boatyard on Croatia. Annalee has 2 alternators charging 2 sets of batteries - the starter battery and a pretty large battery bank that supplies all our power needs when 'off grid'. There is a splitter system - like a one way valve- which ensures both sets of batteries are charged but prevents current flowing from one bank to another. The problem seems to be that one of the splitters has failed and was directing a huge charge to the starter battery from our most powerful alternator, so the battery was receiving in excess of 16.5 volts (the limit of the battery voltmeter) when it should be under 14 volts. The result of this is that the battery 'cooks' in other words it overheats, boiling the sulphuric acid, resulting in sulphur dioxide and hydrogen gas being given off with a lot of heat and, ultimately one dead battery - used to start our engine! Yes the symptoms are as unpleasant as they sound. The fix has been to completely disconnect the offending alternator so it no longer generates current and disconnect the offending leads. Our 'new' system is a return to the old system we had before the second alternator was fitted (as a result of having larger battery banks). We don't generate as much electricity to recharge the batteries as we formerly did, but given that we are travelling on 30 hour trips, mainly under power, we shouldn't have a problem keeping everything topped up.
The plan for tomorrow is to do some topping up of provisions in the morning, check out and start for Sicily around midday. We should be in Sicily by Sunday evening/night. We may even get the opportunity to send an update en-route if the opportunity arises.