Wednesday night was burger night at Clarks Court Bay Marina. For us it was but a short walk from the boat so we had to go. Where II were there during happy hour. We also bumped into John and Caroline from Sweet Caroline.
We also made some new friends. Two British couples were there. Jackie and Dave from Jackster as well as Jamie and Lucy from Bamboozle. They’re both heading west in a similar time frame to us and hanging around Grenada for a bit so hopefully we’ll meet up again from time to time.
Today the focus switched to equalizing some of the drive batteries. I hooked up three batteries in parallel, disconnected our house batteries and used the jump leads to connect the charger to the paralleled drive batteries. The jump leads warmed up fairly quickly so I soon took off one of the batteries. I took hydrometer readings of the problem cells every hour.
For the first couple of hours there was no apparent change in the readings. Ominously, unlike the good cells, the problem cells were showing little if any bubbling from the high voltage being applied to the batteries.
In time, the worst cell began to bubble and as the hours progressed the hyrdometer readings went from terrible to not so terrible. After 7-8 hours the batteries were quite hot so I stopped the session.
Towards the end of this period I took detailed measurements of the house bank. These had been on trickle charge overnight following their equalization and had since been disconnected from each other and any load. In theory they should all have been reading around 12.7 volts. Three read 12.6V and one read 12.4V. The latter battery and one of the others had poor hydrometer readings on single cells (out of six). I tried equalizing the 12.4V battery on its own. It sucked up current and became hot quite quickly. Not good news. I then tried the other house battery with poor readings on it’s own. The poor cell improved quickly but the battery heated up even quicker. It never produced a good reading but it was heading in the right direction.
That is where I’ve left it for today. Part of me feels these batteries have been somewhat abused at some point in their past and we’re now seeing the results. Part of me realizes there is more to do to learn the extent to which they can be recovered. It seems that focussing on individual batteries has a greater opportunity for recovering bad cells so that’s what I’ll do tomorrow.
Also accomplished today was cleaning out the chain locker, removing the old chain and putting in the new and switching the anchors. Unfortunately we don’t have the right sized shackle to connect the new anchor to the chain so we may have to got to town tomorrow to pick one up.
We also were introduced to Mick and his son Ian who live aboard their boat nearby. They’re supposed to be terrific at boat work. We dicussed our need to install a second anchor roller and windlass. They’ll do more work than our professional quote for less so we’re lining them up. This also means we need to get our new windlass ordered and shipped along with all the other stuff we need which is much cheaper in the US.
No other projects closed off today but did some research including, if it comes to it, replacing all our batteries. Haven’t come to that decision yet but it may happen so I may as well be ready for it.
Aside. It’s now mid-July and so far we have had NO tropical storms in the Caribbean even though hurricane season started in June. This doesn’t correlate to having fewer storms but locals are saying it feels cooler this year and that means there’s less energy in the system. That could mean we’ll be unmolested down here in Grenada. Lets hope so. Having said that, looking at the NOAA website just now I see a depression forming on a tropical wave in the eastern Atlantic and, for the first time this year outside of the gulf of Mexico, there is a warning. Something to watch.