We managed to leave Marathon on Tuesday, March 23 on a brilliantly sunny and windless day. As we wound our way through dozens of anchored fishing boats and watched flying fish startled by our approach skitter over the silky smooth sea, I noticed our refrigerator temperature was warmer than it had been a few hours before. Then I noticed the fault code light flashing: two rapid winks of the yellow LED light translated to a failed compressor motor fan.
Leaving Marathon and the Florida Keys on a glassy blue sea…
Less than five miles from Marathon, and something was already broken. Truthfully, I have no idea when the fan failure happened. It certainly could have happened before we left our slip, but still. After some heated discussion, Lisa and I decided to carry on. The refrigerator was cold and the freezer frozen, conditions that certainly should last the three or four days it would take us to reach our destination of Brunswick, GA.
On the up side of things, our alternator/battery charging issue, mentioned in the prior blog, seemed to have been repaired. From our prior blog post:
Going the opposite direction, we had a lovely broad-reach sail back over the reef and into Hawk Channel. As we were approaching the anchorage area, I began the process of bringing down the sails and Lisa started the engine. She soon yelled to me, “the battery light is staying on.” I went back to the cockpit to look. The engine was running, and sure enough, the battery light was glowing red. I stuck my head into the cabin to check the voltage meter at the electrical panel. It was showing 14.3 volts, a typical level of charge for having just started the engine. I looked at the panel again, and the light was off.
Once the anchor was set, we checked again. The engine started and ran normally, but the battery light stayed on. A quick glance at the electrical panel meter and the battery monitor display showed the alternator was hammering the batteries with well over 14 volts, which should have quickly eased to 13.3 or less after a few moments as the batteries were fully topped up from the solar panels. But, it didn’t. We stopped the engine.
That night over dinner, Lisa and I discussed the issue. We decided to head back into Marathon to get the problem checked. Ignoring it was not an option; at a minimum, it could damage and even destroy several thousand dollars’ worth of batteries. At the worst, it could cause a fire and we could lose everything. The next morning, we called Marathon Boat yard, but they were full and couldn’t accommodate us. Marathon Marina had not yet filled our old slip, so back we went. It took a few hours to trace; with the help of a professional marine electrician the problem was found: the connection of the alternator temperature sensor wire to the alternator regulator was bad. After what was literally a 30 second fix, the problem looks to be solved.
Working while sailing…
Onward we went.
By late afternoon, we were passing S-SW of Alligator Reef light tower and picking up a little push from the western edge of the Gulf Stream current. We ate a simple supper of Pimento Cheese sandwiches and crackers. The wind was still nonexistent and the sea a flat calm as the sun set on the western horizon. In the last glow of dusk, we passed Tavernier Creek and continued on towards Key Largo.
The forecast had called for exactly the conditions we were experiencing, and for the wind to fill in during the night at a gentle 5-10 knots from the SE, and then become 10 knots during the next morning. However, as we passed Ft. Lauderdale just after sunrise, we were still powering through a flat sea.
More worrisome though was the fact the battery charging issue once again reared its ugly head during the night. While I was on watch, I caught a flash of red out of the corner of my eye from the engine control panel. I peeked below at the electrical panel volt meter and saw the alternator was hammering our fully charged batteries with nearly 14.8 volts! Good grief! I sat back in the cockpit and looked around. There was no traffic, save a tanker about 12 miles east of Jo Beth. I watched the meter through the night and decided if I did see the charge reach 15 volts, then I would shut everything down and call for a tow. There was still no wind to speak of, and now we were pushing against a counter-current off the Gulf Stream; if I shut everything down and we began to drift, the risk of our little boat being pushed onto the reef was very real. Fortunately, the voltages settled down, albeit still too high. We kept powering on.
Wind…finally!
Florida’s Gold Coast slipped past as we continued north. By middle afternoon, as we were passing the ivory towers of Boca Raton, south of Palm Beach, we felt a stirring in the air…wind! Within a half hour, we were sailing along under a full mainsail and headsail. Finally, we could shut the engine off. The quiet without the drone of the diesel motor was absolutely lovely.
For the next 10 or 12 hours, we slipped along north under a brilliantly starry sky on a long and even swell, at a speed of five, and sometimes six knots. I went to bed around 8 pm, leaving Lisa to take the first watch. When I relieved her at midnight, she updated me on our position: we were just passing the St. Lucie inlet and the yacht haven town of Stuart, FL. The wind had dropped somewhat as had our speed, but things were good. She had also adjusted our course slightly more NE, to give a more comfortable ride as were now in a minor cross swell; that is to say the waves were now coming from two different directions. The batteries seemed to be behaving. She retired below, and I settled in to listen to a podcast from the NPR show, “This American Life.”
As my watch wore on, the wind dropped even more and the cross swell stayed the same, causing us to roll and the sails to slat and bang. Lisa came up at around 3am to help bring in the headsail and then went back to bed, leaving me to continue under the mainsail. The motion of the boat did ease, but now we were moving further than we had wanted to the NE. A large pod of dolphins swam alongside Jo Beth for nearly 45 minutes. I could see the ones closest to the boat in the bright moonlight, and could hear the others all around, whistling and clicking their secret language. Lisa relieved me at 5am, and I slept until around 8, when I relieved her and she went below for another nap. We gybed the boat around, bringing her onto a new course to close a bit more with the coast in the ever decreasing winds. Soon, we were barely making way to the W-NW at a scant 1.5 knots.
While Lisa slept below, I sailed onward, listening to the morning news on the stereo. However, the battery charging issues were being to worry me. I was beginning to think that perhaps the issue wasn’t with the alternator or the alternator charging system, but possibly with one or more of the batteries. Aboard Jo Beth, we have five Group 31 batteries, comparable to what powers a full-size pick-up truck. Four of the batteries are divided into two banks of two, for ‘house’ operations. These are the batteries which power our interior and exterior lights, stereo system, refrigerator freezer, and from which the inverter can draw DC current and covert it to AC current, such as when we need to charge our laptop computers. The remaining battery is a dedicated engine starting battery, which can be incorporated into the house banks if needed, and vice-versa.
If one or more of our batteries had failed, or was failing, it could literally ‘confuse’ the charge regulation systems with bad data. Of course, there are other things which can cause similar issues, but the problem was remarkably inconsistent to the point of consistency – that is, we were seeing a similar pattern of bizarre, seemingly inconsistent behavior from the batteries and charging system which made no sense, but we were seeing it consistently.
We had another issue we were dealing with, and that was our fuel consumption. The weather forecast was wrong, no surprise there, but we were burning through our fuel at an alarming rate. And now, because we were moving so slowly in the almost non-existent winds, our refrigerator was warming and the food we hoped to save would be lost. That morning into afternoon, under sail alone, it took over six hours to go five miles. When Lisa woke from her nap, we snacked on trail-mix in the cockpit and came to a decision: we would motor sail into Port Canaveral for fuel, to repair the refrigerator, and to track down the battery issues once and for all.
The afternoon before, we emptied one of our spare fuel jugs into the main tank. After some quick calculations and plotting a new course, we confirmed we had enough fuel to make it to Port Canaveral and would arrive at sunset. As we began to close on the coast, a target appeared on our AIS system. AIS, or Automated Identification System, works like an aircraft transponder for boats and ships. When we see an AIS target appear on our navigation instruments screen, we can click it and get vital information – things such as the boat’s course and speed, what type of boat or ship it is, and so on. Most vital though is information pertaining to CPA – Closest Point of Approach. This lets us know how close we and the target will be to one another, provided we both maintain our speed and course.
The morning after our arrival at Cape Canaveral…
In this instance, the AIS target turned out to be friends Chris and Janet, aboard their yacht AFRICA. AFRICA is a 38’ Hans Christian cutter rigged yacht. AFRICA was also headed into Cape Canaveral and we called her on VHF radio. Unfortunately, they were having a problem with their radio; they could hear us, but we could not hear their responses. We found this out through a series of text messages, and agreed to contact each other when we arrived and were secured.
I called Cape Marina on my cellphone and secured a slip for the next few nights, explaining our problems with the refrigerator and battery charging. We were instructed to come into the marina and secure ourselves on the fuel dock, and then check in at the office the next morning. Shortly after we arrived, Janet from the yacht AFRICA called to ask where we were and what our plans were. We agreed to meet for lunch the next day after we got showers and had a full night’s sleep. The next day would also start the search for an electrician or mechanic and a refrigerator technician. After our showers, we enjoyed steaming bowls of clam chowder with crackers and then we immediately collapsed into the V-berth.
A little visitor at Cape Canaveral…