I haven’t had the time to get Kudu quite ready to go in the water. The epoxy repair I did hadn’t hardened fully, and the shed I’d built over Kudu wasn’t quite demolished fully, so the Thursday aim has been and gone. However, the boat yard have kindly lifted her out of the compound she was in, and I’m back in the boat yard proper. One step closer.
I got home from work yesterday about 7pm. Kudu had been disconnected from her power station umbilical, which meant I had no heat, and no means of running my laptop, which was required to finish of a few jobs left over from the day. I took the shore power cable and plugged it in to an outlet point in the yard, then walked back and plugged it in to the inlet on the boat. Nice and easy; the power was back.
I popped below to check everything was on, but there was something not quite right. The battery charger was making a strange noise, almost like an old computer accessing its hard disk. I listened for a moment more to try and diagnose the problem when, the strange noise turned to a sharp fizz, and bellows of smoke came pouring out of the charger. Worry would be an understatement.
I dived out of the cockpit and quickly disconnected the power supply, but smoke was still coming. I went to grab the extinguisher, but it wasn’t there. It was still in the compound Kudu had come from. I dived off the boat, barely landing on my feet, and sprinted for the compound to get the extinguisher. Sprinting even quicker, I returned, and though poised and ready to totally make a mess of my entire home, the smoke seemed to be calming. If you have never used a dry power extinguisher, trust me that they make a mess you would not believe, it’s truly disastrous, so now there was no imminent treat of flame, I decided to opt for plan B – cut all the wires, and throw the thing overboard.
So how did this happen, you may be wondering. Well, it comes down to a lesson I learned at a very young age; water and electricity don’t mix well. My shore power cable isn’t long enough to reach the outlet, so I piggy backed two cables together. This is a setup I’ve used for over a year without a problem, but I’d had the join in a vertical position, where as now it was horizontal, and unbeknownst to me, a substantial amount of water had collected in the plug. As best as I can guess, since I’m no expert in these matters, the water allowed current to flow to the earth. I’m guessing further, so please correct me if I’m wrong, that because both the breaker on the boat, and the break at the outlet were the MCB type, and not RCD, which would instantly detect the short, it allowed the current to flow for long enough to send the charger up in smoke, create some other short in the burning electronics, and then finally trip the MCB breaker, which took about 20 seconds. Scary.
Anyway, so there I was with no power, feeling saddened by the loss of my trusty and expensive charger, and indeed a little bit sorry for myself, when the heavens opened up the precipitation valve to full, and an almighty downpour ensued. It was at this point that I discovered the one deck fitting that I’d forgotten to sikkaflex during the refit, and so my bed quickly became substantially more cold and wet that I would have liked.
I woke up a bit grumpy this morning.
I’ve now fudged the power situation by cutting the saturated plugs, and splicing the cables directly together with lashings of electrical tape. Returning from work this evening I found the epoxy repair had hardened, so sanded, and painted with primocon, and tomorrow, subject to no more mishaps, she should be getting lifted in.
We’ll get there in the end, I’m sure.
