Bubble Bubble Toil & Trouble

Battery repair in process....  Eventually it
was possible to more around our
cabin again.

Remember that line from the movie, “Animal House” when the debutante asks her fraternity date, “Greg, honey, is it supposed to be that... soft?”  In a similar vein, I asked Wayne, “Wayne, honey, is our floor supposed to be that... hot?”  In both cases, the answer is “No.”  While the “Animal House” question was challenging one man’s virility, we were concerned about another kind of juice…. 

Our batteries, left unattended in this warm, tropical climate for 15 months, were dry.  That’s not a good thing. We rely on our batteries to run whatever electricity we need, whether it’s for our fridge/ freezer, lights, computer, internet access, etc…. Unless we’re “plugged in” at a marina (our plan is to not do this often), the batteries we rely on get charged from motoring or running our generator, and from our solar panels (future improvements to these are another future project).   Before further investigation, Wayne repeatedly ran our generator to recharge our batteries, which Wayne said was much like “Applying a defibrillator charge to a corpse.”

Wayne on one of many trips to Island Water World,
the local chandlery -- think marine
hardware store.

With much difficulty, Wayne unearthed each one of our three batteries, which were bone dry.  Two were recoverable, the other, literally “boiled” its final death throes; hence the hot floorboards that I noticed.

Fortunately, this takes no electricity to enjoy....
West view out our cockpit in Rodney Bay

Same eve... East view out or cockpit, Rodney Bay

Wayne replaced the dead battery and added two additional ones, “charged” to the tune of $655 USD.  Ouch.  But, we are properly juiced up now.