Close call--Lesson learned

Last Thursday I got a call from my neighbor. Another neighbor was fishing at our dock and noticed smoke coming out of a hatch on Paws Aboard. I ran down the dock and sure enough smoke was exiting the drain from the anchor locker. I grabbed a fire extinguisher, cut off all DC power and went into the forward stateroom and opened the anchor locker. Fortunately the anchor windlass had not ignited and the smoke was just from smoldering insulation. Smoke cleared after about 15 minutes and it appears the only damage is a burned out windlass motor. I called an electrician who is coming this week to diagnose problem. His initial thought is that a slow leak on one of the on deck switches shorted out the switch and caused the windlass motor to run until it overheated. Electrician said this happens more than one would think and a friend told me he has always disconnected on deck switches for the same reason. I was lucky the neighbor was fishing or Paws Aboard could have burned.

Lesson learned was to always turn off power to anchor windlass when leaving boat. I plan to also shut off all non-essential power in the future. Anyone else ever experience this problem?

Nope! Never had that happen or heard of it happening before...but as someone who has everything on, I'm going to start turning just about everything off

The only things I have power to are my bilge pumps and the refrigerator when I leave the boat. Everything else is turned off.

When I leave the boat everything gets switched off except:

- battery charger

- 110v to the fridge (12v gets switched off; in the event of a power outage to the marina I don't want my batteries bottomed out to keep the iced tea cold)

- bilge pumps stay on auto

- forward and aft heads, only because those same switches power the shower sump box pumps (although if those two little 800 gph pumps make a difference to the boat's survival I've got more serious problems).

Thanks for sharing! My windlass doesn't have a breaker, just a big ol' fuse. It always made me a little nervous. It might be worth putting one of those rotary main battery switches in line with it.

My windlass has two wired switches and one relay switch that has two remotes of its own, all driving the main windlass relay. Plenty of room for things to go wrong in that system!

Come to think of it, I believe my forward bilge pump runs off that same fuse. Again, some re-wiring is probably in order.

Added to the list!

My windlass tripped the breaker when i had all the chain out and in a surge. I had the opposite issue. My foot switches wired into the U/D relay and didnt have to handle the motor load. In your smoking situation, pretty clearly over current protection is oversized. Windlass can stall for various reasons.

This happened to a friend on our marina a couple of years ago. Fortunately they were aboard and in the slip and asleep and all it did was pay out the rode. He heard the noise and turned off the power before it all payed out.

My galley maid has a heat sensor (thermal overload) built right into the motor, it is wired into the control circuit. Ours stays on always, should a boat drag down on us etc., a good samaritan stands a chance of saving the boat if we are absent.

Of course we also have properly sized breakers on control circuit and main circuit. Adding a thermal overload to the case and wiring it into the control circuit would be cheap and easy

We turn nearly everything off when we leave the boat. We keep the windlass turned off except when intended for use. There are a damn long couple of large wires leading from who knows where, located who knows where, up to the switch at the head of the forward berth. On the list for renewal! And the breaker will be at the helm rather than in the forepeak!

kenk said:

The only things I have power to are my bilge pumps and the refrigerator when I leave the boat. Everything else is turned off.

Click to expand...

Ditto

All over current protection should be close to the source. If a remote panel or additional over current protection is used that is fine.

I too would worry.

When our electrician re-wired most of our large draw 12v systems he strongly recommended adding easily accessed OFF/ON switched to the windlass & bow thruster power cables. His horror story was a bow thruster gone wild & pushing a boat all over a marina before crew could disconnect. Our are now at the foot on the island berth.

Smoking wires suggest an electrical design that does not meet CG regs.