Finally finished winterizing the sail boat

I got the call shortly before Thanksgiving that the yard had hauled the boat out of the water. Last time I had left it I had managed to get all of the sails down and everything but the AC units and water maker winterized. To winterize the water mater I needed a couple special hoses that had not come with the boat. Unfortunately the quick connect ends needed were not something I could buy just anywhere and with the boat being in a somewhat remote location I decided I would try to find what I needed at home or get it shipped to the house. To protect the water maker I left an electric heater running in the forward compartment. This was great while the boat had shore power but was less great without. Seems the yard remembered that I had left the heater running in it and had rigged up some shore power for me. Unfortunately it seems a squirrel decided to commit subside by nibbling the wiring and no one noticed the dead squirrel or the fact my boat was not getting power. To complicate things even more everything on my boat runs though the inverters/chargers this means the boat was trying to supply power to the heater and it seems with all the gray days the solar was not enough to keep up with it. Needless to say when I got to the boat my house bank was dead (Lithium Ion) as were my starting batteries(Lead Acid). Once the yard got ahold of the power company I got power back to the boat fairly quickly. I then spent the next few days trying to figure out why my batteries were not charging and why the starting batteries were dead.

It turns out I had left the ECU fuse on for the engines. This is the engine computer. It seems that it's always running and does eat some power which was enough to kill those batteries over the period of 13 days with no power. I've never had engines this new before so it was not even on my radar to know to turn those off when I left the boat. Lesson learned and I probably should be turning them off when I leave the boat for more than a week going forward.

The house bank was a different story and I'm still not sure I have that solved but after talking with the guy that designed the system for my boat I think I've got some good direction to try when I get back to MD. The first day I was there I went about winterizing the water maker. Once I was done with that I moved the heater into the main salon while I was doing other stuff (mainly reading up on the batteries and chargers) as it was about 35 degrees outside. The first thing I tried was to plug a normal battery charger in and attempt to bring the house bank up from 7 -12% depending on the battery to at least 15% thinking that they were below the min cutoff for the charger to recognize them for safe charging. For some reason one battery did charge but it only charged to 53% and quit. The rest just kept popping the remote battery switches. Well I got one of them as high as 20% the charger would attempt to kick on then then shut off and the safety switch would once again pop. What I've learned is that as everything on the boat runs though the chargers/inverters they were working to charge my starting batteries, managing the power the heater was drawing, as well as the power from the battery charger. The power was being provided by a 50amp cable that is then spilt to two 30amp outlets going into the boat. When I looked at the load I could not figure out why the units were showing 25% not thinking it was the heater/aux battery charger I had borrowed. His suggestion was to get more power to the boat thinking the chargers were starved of power thus unable to start the charging process. As I'm probably not going to be starting the generator while the boat is in the yard, though it is an interesting thought to run a garden hose into the sea strainer while somehow holding it there ensuring the generator gets the cooling water it needs. I think instead I'm going to try charging up one battery at a time with nothing else running on the boat. Hopefully the power provided will support this more limited method as I have seen the chargers pull almost 200amps while charging. 

I was pretty frustrated when I left on Friday having not had success with getting the house bank charged over the 3 days I had been at the yard. Then adding to that frustration as I was trying to just turn everything off with the intent of coming back one more time in two weeks to get the house bank charged up I could not even figure that out. Seems even when I flipped all of the breakers and the master power knob to the off position the boat still would not completely shut off. When I left I was more than mildly mad/frustrated.

Before leaving I thought about the training we had got on the boat and decided to reach out to those guys. They then put me in touch with the guy that designed the electrical system. I learned they had hid a 12v battery in one of the heads that is in place to ensure an even 12v power flow. Seems some of the CZone stuff would glitch from time to time without really consistent power and this was the solution. Thus no complete power cut off. Seems their thought was the boat would always have enough solar to keep the CZone and Mastervolt system running. They did not plan for folks winterizing boats, inside storage, or long gray winter days :(

On a good note as I was trying to devise a method to get my mainsail off the deck of the boat one of guys in the yard offered me use of their craine. At 35ft it was just long enough to reach the where the sail was sitting on the deck of the boat. With it I was able to lower it to one those airport type tugs the yard has then drive that over to my truck where it took three of use to slide it in. Next stop will be my favorite sailmaker in OH.. Hopefully he is equipped to deal with this big heavy thing!