Woke up at 6:00 am and prepared to get underway with everything started and ready to go. And then the lights went out. We totally lost our complete 12 volt system. With flashlight in hand, Wink grabbed the infrared thermometer looking for hot spots. Next he ripped all the covers off the battery cases looking for bad connections. While he was doing this, Wilma grabbed the infrared thermometer and started scanning the 12 volt primary feed lines. Wilma noticed a 15 degree temp difference in one connection and we focused on this point, which was a loose crimped connector on the largest of the cables. The connector had come completely away from the cable. Wink cleaned the connector with his dremmel tool and filed all the metal parts in order to make good electrical contact. Now, the problem was how do we re-crimp this connector onto this huge cable? The solution was to use a large pair of bolt cutters (which we had on board) to leverage the crimping.
We had been having sporadic electrical problems for over a week, but just couldn’t isolate the issue. We think the problem is solved, but we will need to get new electrical cable and connector at some point and replace it.
We had planned to be underway by 6:45 am to ensure that we met our cruising goal for today. However, with the morning emergency, we were delayed 45 minutes. We were underway by 7:30 am. Wink and I both agree that we are glad this happened when it did. It would be terrible to loose power when going through a bridge or being near another boater.
Here's a photo of Sea Dee under the Bridge of Lions in St. Augustine, FL. The rest of the day was extremely good on the water. About 4:00 pm we came to the George Munson Bridge which is New Symrna Beach area. It wasn't suppose to open until 5:00 pm but the workman finished early and the boats were lined up like cord wood.
Sea Dee with sailboats in the background coming through George Munson Bridge in New Smyrna Beach, FL. Tomorrow, I may ask Annie to take a photo of John Henry and email to me for the upcoming blog or maybe Andy will post a picture of us on his blog which you can view from a link.
With all the minimum wake and slow boats we're still scampering to meet our goal for an anchorage tonight. We may be traveling a little ways in the dark. I'm hoping to write a small paragraph of two everyday. So stay tuned for THE BIG BAHAMA ADVENTURE!
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