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002-Cleaning the Wound

Insurance check in hand, we were off to the races.  Our retirement trip would have to wait 6 months and be re-routed but it seemed like a good revision.  And being retired gave us lots of time to work the task.  We hoped for a swift refurbishment , and set off on our new course of the Islands first and the Great Lakes later.
The alternator was the first confirmed damage that could only have been lighting.  Notice in the picture the scorched wire.  The insulation should be red not black.  The tech who rebuilt the unit was amazed at the damage, he'd never seen anything like it.
The solar controller worked but had melted.  The first in the category of "working but damaged".
If you look at the wire you'll see a section that is blackened.  This was discovered not because the cable failed but because the component that used it had "fried" and I was salvaging the multi strand cable bundle for a single wire to use somewhere else.  There was no evidence of the scorching inside the assembled cable, it had to be disassembled to discover this damage buried in between the ends.  Had we continued to use the cable bundle, this defect might have gone many years more before failing in a measurable way if at all.  But ha it failed, it would have be a "gremlin" making the boat unreliable and it disheartened me that we would never be able to get beyond this event.

The dismantling phase ended up being a massive effort, not just for finding defects but also for understanding how the boat was actually wired.  Troubleshooting required junctions be disconnected so components like light bulbs and the alternator didn't provide "false" continuity.   It seemed as though each day in this phase resulted in more discovery of something else to do.  I began to regret not having sold the boat at a fireside auction and starting over.  But we were committed to making it work now.

Comments

  1. art3July 24, 2019 at 12:17 PM

    coincidentally, I recently listened to a blog about the all-female crew who sailed in the round-the-world race 1989-90. They had a similar tale ... having to tear-out and rebuild the electrical systems in their sailboat.
    I really enjoyed reading this particular chapter ... each time I think the worst is over, there's more!!

    ReplyDelete

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