I’d told the owner of Toba Wilderness Resort, she one of the most gracious people in one of the most beautirufl places in the world, that I'd decided to skip Octopus Islands until I had more confidence in the repair. Instead I’d head to Heriott Bay.
Maybe not my best decision of the last six days since the alternaotr froze in Brem Bay, but good enough.
After five long dayts of searching for parts to be sent by float plane into Desolation Sound, including a new dinghy motor and an alternator for Foxy, then loss of my crew over disagreement about how to tackle the problem of no parts and no mechanics over a holiday weeked, and nearly insufferable heat, the mechanic who came seemed comeptent and confident.
I’d warned him my system was a bit of mismash from years of cuts and patches. It didn’t seem that difficult to him. He did note that the voltage a a bit high before he left, but assumed that was because it was charging at “bulk.”
The next day I was on my way, but still in sight of Toba Wilderness Marina when I noticed my system was running at 15.8 volts. Too high, too high. I dropped into the engine room. My regulator was dead, the Mastervolt management system was in warning mode. I cut back power, wondering if I should turn around, or look for a shallow place to anchor and sort it out. I brought the fire extinguisher and tool bag to within easy reach, cut my rpms back and looked at the map for bailout points.
Then I remembered I had an APC switch that had to be on to start the engine. Though it might fry the diodes in the alternator, I could stop charging the batteries. I’m no mechanic but I was pretty sure this was better than trying to disconnect the positive lead from the alternator with the engine running under direction of the autopilot, but that was an option too, if not a good one.
The downside was that cutting the APC took out my engine instruments, but I knew what 2,000 rpm sounds like and I can smell over heating.
There were whales at the three-way junction of Ramsay Arm, Pryce Channel and Deer Passage. I headed down toward Heriott Bay.
I made it to Drew Harbor behind Rebecca Spit and made a plan. Did I have power from oil pressure switch? Are the fuses blown? Was the alternator mis-wired? Yes, the fuses were blown. There were two of them, but I only had one good 10 amp twin prong fuse on board. That would be enough, because the system had been switched from two alternators to one, but it would not be enough if I didn’t solve the problem before turning things back on and blew my only good one,
At some point in the past, a mechanic had merged the two alternator harnesses into one, so there were two of every wire and it was impossible to figure out which one went in and which came out. I called him names as I cut the bundles apart.
I traced wires and found that only one of the two field wires from the regulator had a connection, and it was connected to a white wire that went to the alternator. The mechanic had thought.the white wire was a temp sensor because it had a ring connector on the end. I knew it was white instead of blue because someone had just used what was already there instead of properly color coding new field wire. The field wire was the only wire supposed to be connected to the four-pin connector that plugs into the alternator. The mechanic had used the old four pin connector that had several leads all disappearing into other old harnesses.
I called the mechanic and he agreed with my solution. I cut off the ring terminal, put on a female spade terminal that I plugged into the right connector on my new four-prong plug, taped over the other wires and crossed my fingers.
Much of this sorting out took until 9 p.m. the day I left the marina and until the afternoon the next day. I admit to a certain amount of fatigue. But, when I turned the key, the engine ran, the regulator lit up, and battery voltage was 14.6 volts, just right for bulk charging with that regulator! I did it!
This morning at 7:30 a.m. the winds were light and the tides with me. I’d earlier noticed my coolant was low and had topped it off (I took the jugs I vacuumed out of the bilge with me, Andrea had said you didn’t want them (smile)). I’d had no luck finding the leak when the engine was off, so south of Quadra I put the boat on auto pilot and went down into the engine room
It took a while, but I finally noticed a two per second drip from a small hose under the another hose into the thermostat. I tried to tighten it with the engine running, but it wasn’t tightening and I thought second or third degree burns dozens of miles from nowhere would be a bad thing. It wasn’t even a close decision. I turned the engine off and went below, cut the bad end off the hose, put a new clamp on it, pushed it back together and started up the engine. No leak. And when I pulled into Tribune Bay this afternoon, my coolant level was where it should be.
I rewarded myself with a swim in the bay’s warm water and the last of the chili my former boat mates left behind.