Finally got my batteries charged and started the process of getting the boat ready for shrink-wrapping

I made the nine hour trek back to the boat this week in hopes of getting my house bank of batteries charged up for the boats winter rest. Its starting to feel like at this pace I should have everything winterized just in time for spring to roll around.

Following the directions from the Xquisite service manager I attempted to limit all of the power consumption on the boat so the charger/inverters would not have to worry about charging my starting batteries or doing much with the inverters. This turned out to be a bust. The hope here was maybe the chargers were not getting enough power to kick in. I called back and was then advised to keep pressing the remote switches every time they popped to bring the batteries back up ensuring that I did this within a few seconds of popping in an effort to to keep the battery chargers continually pushing power avoiding them spinning down. I did do this for about four hours and was making progress getting a couple of the batteries up to the 50% range but it was a lot of work and the chargers still were not kicking in to take over. This did not feel like the right solution.

During the drive to the boat I remembered a discussion I had when we first bought the boat that we thought the 50amp splitter that came with the boat might be messed up. I wondered might this be the issue so I pulled out my tester and sure enough one side of the 50amp 125v splitter was only getting about 60 volts. After calling around a bit I did not have much luck finding a new 50amp 125v end I could put on the cable but I did find a new adaptor cable that was only about an hour drive away. Long story short I made the trek, installed the new cable, and while I now had a constant 125volts per side this did not fix the problem.

I then decided to call in a Mastervolt Tech. The first one I called had no clue how to help me but provided me his service line directly with them. The actual Mastervolt tech on the other end was great. He told me what I had been doing was ok to get them out of the danger zone but it was a bad idea to continue forcibly charging the batteries. I was told if I could find a windows laptop with a USB type B cord to connect to the Mastervolt system he could remote in to reset the battery safety error for me. It seems this is an automatic safety Mastervolt builds in ensuring that a tech looks at the batteries to validate they are still safe after a discharge that takes the battery below 10% of capacity.

Somehow I was lucky enough to find a cheap windows laptop on sale at the local Walmart along with a USB type B cord that I had not seen used anywhere in the last 15 years. I had figured I might have to go to the Goodwill to find something like that. I brought it back to the boat, connected to the internet via my phone called Mastervolt back and sure enough the tech was able to remote into my PC connect to each of the batteries resetting the three that had gone below 10%. Seemed the fourth one was ok. Once he did that they were happy to talk with the chargers again and after about six hours were back to full charge. The other upside is that I now have the Mastervolt software and a password that will let me see more of what's going on with the batteries. One problem solved!

Time to move on to the next concern. Last time I was at the boat Trappe had got around 2-3 inches of snow. This time it appeared they recently got another couple inches. I'm starting to get concerned about water getting in to things and freezing then contracting all winter. I started thinking about how to get some tarps over the boat. After another 40 minute drive to a store for some wood I started building a brace that would allow the tarps to have an angle to them but seems the yard did not love my idea should a tarp break loose and start beating on my neighbors boat. Apparently this has been an issue in the past. So the new plan is to shrink wrap it and they will use my existing frame. I feel like the yard might have simply come up with a creative way to get more service work out of me but hopefully its not to late to avoid damage and I'm sure it will work better then my plan. Hopefully the stantions will hold up to the shrink-wrap.