Simple solutions to complex problems

…. Warning … This post isn’t about meeting people, walking on white beaches, swimming in crystal clear water, or enjoying breathtaking sunsets with a refreshing beverage. Instead it is about some of the things we have to do along the way to enable us to partake in all those previously mentioned blessings….

One of our cruising friends is fond of saying ‘There are always at least three things on the boat that either have, or are about to, break. You just don’t know about them yet!”

Unfortunately, I tend to agree with them.

Although we put a lot of time and energy into maintaining Eos, she is a 28 year old boat, the marine environment can take its toll on equipment, and sometimes things just wear out. We’ve found that sometimes when an item stops working it may not actually be worn out or broken, rather it just is looking for some attention. Other times it’s not the harsh environment that causes an issue, but plain old operator error.

We’ll talk about a couple of ‘complicated’ issues we’ve had this season and how we ‘fixed’ them and let you be the judge of whether or not it was the harsh marine environment or operator error that caused the problem in the first place.

Problem no. 1: Depth sounder would periodically stop displaying the depth.

(The depth sounder is one of our instruments/gages onboard that measures and shows us how deep the water is. Think of it as our underwater eyes that help prevent us from sailing Eos into shallow water or hitting a submerged object like a coral head – When it’s not working we are sailing without one of our most important senses)

Prior to starting our journey this past fall, I noticed that periodically the display for the depth sounder would start blinking and stop displaying updated depth. It didn’t happen a lot, but often enough for me to try and look for the cause of the problem.

I tightened all the electrical connections associated with the system and still occasionally had the issue. Fortunately though, when it would malfunction it was only for a few seconds and then it would start working again. Not ideal, but I was ok with starting our journey.

Since we’ve traveled south several times over the past few years, our navigation system tracks and can display all our previous ‘tracks’ (the route or path we followed). In the worst case, if the depth sounder stopped working completely, we could always just follow our previous track and know we should more or less have plenty of water under the boat.

During the trip south, the depth sounder stopped working more frequently. Upon further research and talking with marine electronics professionals, the general consensus was that the transducer (the part of the system that transmits a signal into the water from the boat, listens for the signal to return, and calculates the depth based on the time it takes for the signal to return) was going bad and should be replaced.

I tended to agree with this diagnosis, especially since it is the original 28 year old transducer. So we knew what needed to be fixed. Unfortunately, to replace the transducer meant the boat would need to hauled out of the water at a marina, the old transducer removed, and a new one installed. The transducer is mounted in a ‘thru hull’ and when you go to remove it you have about a 2” wide hole in the bottom of the boat through which water can come rushing into the boat. Changing out transducers takes time, thus the reason for needing a haul out. It’s not something you do when the boat is in the water.

Besides the expense of a haul out, trying to find a marina in early January in Florida that had an opening was not easy. So we pursued an alternative, more temporary, solution that didn’t involve a haul out.

They do make some transducers that you can epoxy or glue to the inside of the boat instead of requiring a hole, but they aren’t as accurate. Since we did have our old tracks to help guide us I was ok with using something a little less accurate- heck less accurate was more accurate than no reading at all!

We tried several sources and were unsuccessful in getting the parts needed to make such a system work so an ‘in hull’ system wasn’t going to be an option.

At least the depth sounder was now still occasionally giving us a reading. An occasional reading was better than no reading. At least we still had our old tracks and if worst came to worst we could do like sailors of old and use a ‘lead line’ to determine our depth in shallow water. (For those that are really curious you can look on Wikipedia to read about lead lines).

So we decided to head over to the Bahamas with our depth sounder only occasionally working knowing we had recent tracks and the water is crystal clear making it easier to ‘read the bottom’ and avoid taking Eos into shallow water.

Two days after clearing into the Bahamas in Great Harbor and leaving the marina, we anchored out and were finally able to go for a swim in that crystal clear water we’ve shown in other posts. I put on my snorkel gear to take a look at the bottom of the boat and just check things out.

When I dove on the boat I saw that the bottom of the boat was spotless with no barnacles or other marine growth anywhere. That was anywhere EXCEPT the depth transducer! Barnacles had taken up residence on the entire 2” surface of the transducer.

I had Diane hand me a scraper and I promptly evicted the hard creatures from the transducer.

Apparently they began growing over the summer in our marina in Maryland and survived or multiplied as we traveled south. Once removed and the transducer surface cleaned we haven’t had a problem since.

A new transducer is still on the list of items for upgrades prior to our next trip, but instead of a haul out, or glueing something to the inside of the boat, a few dives under the boat with a scraper solved that one for now. Simple.

Problem no. 2: We couldn’t hear anything on our SSB (single side band) radio.

We have several different radios and other means of communicating with the outside world on Eos. We have our VHF (very high frequency) radio that is capable of communicating short distances with other boats( up to about 10 miles or so). We also have our cell phones that work as long as we’re within a few miles of a cell tower. And finally we have our SSB (high frequency) radio that is capable of communicating 100’s and 1000’s of miles depending on atmospheric conditions. It is a marine amateur/HAM radio.

SSB radios used to be what most cruisers used for getting weather information and news. Today many cruisers have switched to satellite internet systems like Elon Musk’s Starlink service. Since we don’t cruise full time and aren’t big users of streaming services, we haven’t gone that route yet.

With our SSB radio working properly we can listen daily to our marine weather forecaster, check in with other cruisers, and have a means of long distance emergency communication if we ever need it.

When it’s not working, we are limited to VHF communications to other nearby boats, or relying on cell service for our weather information. Unfortunately not everywhere we travel here in the Bahamas has reliable cell service.

If we aren’t going to be traveling south for the winter and leaving the boat out of the water in Maryland for the winter, as part of our winterizing process, we often remove the radios and some other electronic devices and store them in our house. When spring rolls around, we reinstall everything and get ready for the sailing/cruising season.

That is what we did last winter and spring. Removed the radio in the fall and reinstalled it in the spring.

I noticed this past summer that I really wasn’t able to hear anything but static on the SSB radio, but attributed that to being in a marina with lots of electrical interference from other boats and rigging. I’d check it again as we started heading south.

In the fall as we were traveling south the situation really didn’t change much except that I did notice I could hear transmissions on the VHF frequencies very clearly and nothing but static on the HF frequencies. (Our SSB radio can hear both VHF and HF)

I’d have to work on this more before we got to the Bahamas as I wanted to make sure we had a reliable means of getting weather forecasts.

While we were in Florida, I cleaned the area where the antenna lead connects to one of our wire back stays (part of the rigging that keeps our mast upright and also serves as our SSB HF antenna). I also replaced and used a heavier /sturdier connector to ensure I had a good connection. That should have solved the problem.

Nope that didn’t do the trick. I still had great VHF reception and nothing but static on HF or SSB. What next?

Well, when all else fails read the manual. Right?

So I dug out the manual for the radio and before long I came across the likely issue and solution.

The diagram of the back of the radio where the antenna connection is shows that one connection is specifically dedicated for an HF antenna and the other for a VHF antenna.

When I re-installed the radio this past spring, I connected my antenna lead to the wrong terminal on the back of the radio! Once I removed it from the VHF terminal and connected it to the HF terminal no more static and we could both hear and transmit great on the HF frequencies.

Another easy fix to a frustrating problem. (In case you’re wondering we do have separate dedicated VHF radios with their own dedicated antennas so when we properly connected the SSB radio we weren’t negatively effecting our ability to use our VHF radios)

Now the crew could rest easy knowing we could get weather information anywhere we went this season, even without cell service, and that we had a means for long distance emergency communication if required.

Two down one more to go. (Hopefully no more)

Problem no. 3: Low voltage in our batteries overnight was causing the refrigerator/freezer to stop unless the engine was used to recharge the batteries.

As we’ve written about before, while living on the boat at anchor we don’t have any outside sources for electricity and rely on Eos’ batteries for all our electricity needs. (Lights, refrigeration, navigation electronics, charging cell phones, etc).

We do have 3 ways to generate electricity on board – the alternator on the engine (just like your car), 4 solar panels that can generate power as long as the sun is shining, and finally a small wind turbine that generates electricity when there is a breeze (even when it’s dark).

The electricity that we generate is stored in two places – a dedicated start battery so that we always have energy to start the engine and a separate house battery bank that consists of 4 batteries connected in parallel. The house bank is designed to store the energy generated by any of the three sources and then be available to be pulled out and used overtime.

There’s a ton of information on line and some really good books that cover how batteries work for those that are curious, so I’m not going to get into any technical detail. However, it is important for the story to give a little bit of a layman’s description of batteries.

Think of a battery like a container of water, say a gallon jug. That jug can hold one gallon of water. Four jugs can hold 4 gallons. When the jugs are connected in parallel you have equal access to all 4 gallons of water.

The chargers (alternator, solar panels, wind generators) are like faucets. They put water into the jugs and once the jug(s) are full unless you turn the faucet off, the water will just keep coming out of the faucet and start spilling out of the jugs. When connected in parallel, you are filing all 4 jugs equally at the same time, but they still will only hold a total of 4 gallons. Likewise, when taking water out, it is removed equally across all jugs.

Greatly simplified but hopefully this will provide a basic picture of our system.

On Eos we have 4 105amp 12volt AGM batteries (very similar to car batteries) in our house bank. With those 4 connected in parallel we have 420 amps in our house bank (in keeping with my simplistic description and for this post just think of amps of electricity as gallons of water!)

420 amps isn’t a huge battery bank by today’s standards but it is more than sufficient considering we typically only use 50 to 60 amps a day while at anchor. The biggest load on the system comes from our refrigerator.

Our solar and wind generator can keep up with that demand and on a typical day our batteries are full or topped up by mid-day. Or so we thought.

Recently we noticed that around 2 or 3 in the morning the refrigerator would start flashing a low voltage alarm and stop running the compressor, which keeps things cold, because too many amps had been removed from the system.

One of us would notice the light flashing and awaken the other (especially if it was Diane that noticed the alarm. If it was me who noticed, I’d let her sleep). Once awake, I’d start the engine using the dedicated start battery and then let the engine run for an hour or so to recharge the batteries (put more water in those jugs) then turn the engine off and go back to sleep, knowing I’d put enough energy back into the system to run the rest of the evening.

In the morning, when the sun came out, the solar panels would recharge the batteries and all would be good until about 2 or 3 the next morning.

But this shouldn’t have been happening since we were only consuming 50 to 60 amps and had a house bank of 420 amps. It was time to do some more investigating and troubleshooting.

During the course of my troubleshooting, along with the help of one of my cruiser friends we began to go battery by battery (jug by jug) to see if we could isolate the problem.

It didn’t take us long to find the issue.

It seems that either when I was working on the boat and installing new solar panels this summer or when I had a technician install a new charger/inverter, one of us forgot to connect one of the battery leads from the first battery to the second one. Batteries 2,3&4 were all connected to each other but they weren’t connected to battery 1 which is where all the electricity for charging comes into the system.

So while I thought we were running on 4 batteries with 420 amp capacity, in reality we were only running one 1 battery with 105 amps. So everything was coming out of that one jug and the other three weren’t being used at all. No wonder we were running out of electricity during the night.

Once we properly connected battery 1 to the other 3 our electricity problems were solved! We were back to being able to use all 4 jugs instead of only one.

Another simple fix to a vexing problem.

We have some friends joining us next week and then our 2 year old grandson and his parents will be joining us the first week of April. So it is going to get busy again onboard Eos and it will be a few weeks before we post again.

But as always, we enjoy sharing and appreciate all your prayers.

(Technical p.s. We have a fourth charging source that we use when in a marina and connected to shore power, an AC battery charger. The shore power charger is connected in such a way that it basically charges each battery individually so batteries 2, 3, & 4 had been last charged back in January when we were connected to shore power and were reading 12.4v when we discovered the issue. Fortunately they were not discharged much and all appears well in the house bank.)