Battery Power

Monday 15th July

Today we went over to Asolare and chatted to Peter, the owner. He has a full set of new batteries just delivered from France for his boat. The reason is that he has had a problem with 2 of his 12 batteries and the builders shipped him a new set under warranty. The "old" ones are only 11 months old and there are 10 good ones as tested. We arranged to take the 5 best over to BlueFlyer and stored them in the cockpit to fit tomorrow as we are still on a temporary shore power. Then we 3 took Peter out to dinner, having been to a 50th birthday celebration for one of the WARC skippers. This was on a small island within the harbour. Chocolate cake and Champagne all round for about 75 people there.

On our arrival back to the boat, having stopped off in the local for a drink and some dancing to live music, Hugh even shuffled around the floor, we found the shore power turned off and the batteries very flat indeed - yellow lights.

Darryn then changed all the batteries by torchlight at 12.30 and by 1 o'clock we had lights again and the fridge and freezer were on. The engine will be left on tonight for about 4 hours to really top up the batteries, Hugh will get up and switch off.

Altogether a good day, even though the guys who came to fix the VHF radio couldn't, but did call others to look tomorrow with proper test equipment. There's hope for it yet, but just in case Hugh bought a new and more powerful handheld radio in Fiji before departure - 50% discount!

As this is being written the charge rate is slowly dropping, all very reassuring.