Sunday – 8 May 2016 – Another day in Hampton, Virginia
Sunday morning would be spent tearing the aft cabin apart, tearing the forward cabin/salon apart to access the cabinet where all the manuals are kept and start troubleshooting our electrical problem.
Bob pulled out his tools and voltmeter (which meant tearing the galley and nav station apart) and discovered the battery is dead….dead batteries are a running theme at the moment. Replacing the voltmeter battery was easy and he was now ready to start testing things.
To test the voltage regulator is a 3 step process. First with the engine off – all is fine. Second with the ignition on and engine off – all is fine. Third requires starting the engine to do the test. Turn off all electric, disconnect shore power and start engine. (The starting battery again got charged over night by the shore power so it started easily.) With engine started and RPMs raised to above idle we noticed the volt meter now showed over 14 (yesterday was under 13) which is the normal and acceptable level. Turning on the combiners so the starting battery and bow thruster battery were included the volt meter now read 16 which is what we are accustomed to. (We don’t know if it “should” be like this, but it is how it has been ever since we replaced the batteries so many months ago.) Okay — problem is no longer a problem. Everything is working fine – but for no apparent reason. It is possible that there had been a loose connection that got “fixed” by Bob’s fiddling with wires.
Sooooo….. magic happened, or the mystery plot will thicken as we move forward, but for now, unless the builder warns us otherwise we will move on up the Bay tomorrow as originally planned, knowing that the next marina we are scheduled to stay also has a good service yard….just in case.