False Alarm!

Well we didn’t get away!!
About an hour after posting on the Sunday evening Dan was outside pottering around and I was finishing off emails etc when the kids and I heard a funny popping sound. Needless to say I blamed the kids initially but after a few moments when I could start to smell the burning I knew something was not so good, and it wasn’t! Our 48 Volt Shore Charger had decided it had enough after just three years of service.

Dan spent quite a lot of time that night making sure that this was the issue, phoning our crew who was supposed to be arriving in the morning and getting on the internet to see if he could fix the problem himself. No such luck, equipment like this is not an easy fix.

On the Monday morning we got hold of a marine electrician and he was great but did confirm our worst fears, so Monday was spent sourcing and organising where we could get another one from. The issue for us is that if we don’t have the shore charger we cannot recharge the batteries more than what is being drawn from them. We might be able to now with the wind generators when we are on passage, but as we have not yet sailed with them we don’t want to risk that, and if we need to motor anywhere the drain on the batteries would be just too great. Now if we regenerated with the props as we were supposed to .....

Anyway, the advice we are getting from distributors is that there are none in NZ, probably none in Australia and that it will need to come from Germany, so with the volcanic ash around who knows how long that may take. But I do have to say that our issues are nothing after listening to the news this morning about Christchurch.

So for now we are just waiting for the part, about an hour’s installation hopefully, then the right weather to see us on the way. We will keep you posted as to when.