Well, let me see. I spent 4 hours Monday decorating the boat for the Christmas Boat Parade, 3 on Tuesday, 4 on Wednesday, then another three on Thursday as we were putting the finishing touches on. The parade is tonight and tomorrow night and I’m sitting here in my living room watching the boats go by and crying in my drink.
As you may recall, in September we had a runaway starter motor on the stbd engine. My mechanic was knee deep in getting boats out of the water and getting them winterized so I told Jim to not worry about my problem and take care of it when he had time. I told him I just wanted to be sure we would be all fixed so we could go in the boat parade.
We took off for AZ and I kept in touch with him while we were gone. He got the starter rebuilt and installed on the boat. He turned on the starter switches and it turned over just great so he shut it off and called it good.
We went down to the boat on Monday to start decorating and also to drive it over to the fuel dock to fill up on diesel. Neither engine would start. The generator would not start. We had no 24V power at all.
I panicked and called him and found he was up elk hunting. Two of his guys came down and spent several hours trying to figure out what happened and they discovered that the batteries in the starter circuits were deader than a doornail. Boiled dry. So they checked the 24V starter and it was fried.
Jim had told me I should replace it because it was 20 years old, old technology, and it could crap out at any time. Well we all know how Murphy’s Law works. It crapped out at the worst possible time. Fortunately Jim had ordered a new ProMariner 24Volt, 30 Amp, 3 circuit charger and it was sitting on his desk. The two workers were going to install it on Tuesday and would have it up and running on Wednesday, which was the day Jim was to return to work from his hunting trip.
Jim replaced the batteries, still nothing to make the stbd engine start. The port engine was fine. He started checking wiring diagrams and found that there is a wire harness that connects at the engine and goes to a “Y” where it splits to go to both helms to feed them signals for the instruments. There were some fried wires in the end of the harness at the engine. Damn. He checked the upper helm and all of the wiring going to the stbd gauges was fried. The lower helm gauges and wiring seemed to be OK.
So this morning we called the insurance company and gave them the bad news. They opened a claim and I’m now waiting for word from an adjuster. So the boat is all decorated and I’ll take some photos tomorrow night with the lights on.
I’m bummed but, if there’s a silver lining to the cloud it’s that we’re headed back down to AZ at the end of the month and he’ll have about 3 months to get it all fixed and ops checked.
As you may recall, in September we had a runaway starter motor on the stbd engine. My mechanic was knee deep in getting boats out of the water and getting them winterized so I told Jim to not worry about my problem and take care of it when he had time. I told him I just wanted to be sure we would be all fixed so we could go in the boat parade.
We took off for AZ and I kept in touch with him while we were gone. He got the starter rebuilt and installed on the boat. He turned on the starter switches and it turned over just great so he shut it off and called it good.
We went down to the boat on Monday to start decorating and also to drive it over to the fuel dock to fill up on diesel. Neither engine would start. The generator would not start. We had no 24V power at all.
I panicked and called him and found he was up elk hunting. Two of his guys came down and spent several hours trying to figure out what happened and they discovered that the batteries in the starter circuits were deader than a doornail. Boiled dry. So they checked the 24V starter and it was fried.
Jim had told me I should replace it because it was 20 years old, old technology, and it could crap out at any time. Well we all know how Murphy’s Law works. It crapped out at the worst possible time. Fortunately Jim had ordered a new ProMariner 24Volt, 30 Amp, 3 circuit charger and it was sitting on his desk. The two workers were going to install it on Tuesday and would have it up and running on Wednesday, which was the day Jim was to return to work from his hunting trip.
Jim replaced the batteries, still nothing to make the stbd engine start. The port engine was fine. He started checking wiring diagrams and found that there is a wire harness that connects at the engine and goes to a “Y” where it splits to go to both helms to feed them signals for the instruments. There were some fried wires in the end of the harness at the engine. Damn. He checked the upper helm and all of the wiring going to the stbd gauges was fried. The lower helm gauges and wiring seemed to be OK.
So this morning we called the insurance company and gave them the bad news. They opened a claim and I’m now waiting for word from an adjuster. So the boat is all decorated and I’ll take some photos tomorrow night with the lights on.
I’m bummed but, if there’s a silver lining to the cloud it’s that we’re headed back down to AZ at the end of the month and he’ll have about 3 months to get it all fixed and ops checked.