Back in Sovereign Harbour on Friday night we reconnected the shore power and switched on. Everything seemed normal, the Quick branded smart charger seemed to be working fine and the battery gauge on the instrument panel said it was charging at 14 v which seemed normal for quite flat batteries!
It seemed to be running ok but quite busy! Going to bed and sleeping late till 9 am the cabin had a strange acrid smell and slightly sulphurous. The battery charger was busy working away and on hearing a strange bubbling sound from underneath the port side cabin benches I lifted the seat base to find the slightly alarming sight of one of the large ‘house’ batteries boiling its electrolyte! Immediately I switched everything off and disconnected shore power! Both batteries had now started to boil, certainly the middle cell where they touched the other batteries.
Venting the boat in case of hydrogen gas it took 6 hours before the batteries were cool enough to move the worse and most damaged one onto the pontoon! Both batteries seemed well vented so I am sure we were in no danger of a gas explosion!
The engineer is coming on Monday so hopefully we will find out why! I hope the starter battery has not been damaged.
Well we seem to be managing just fine without electricity, we cannot sail until we get it fixed as we have no navigation lights or instruments.
At least we have gas, lanterns and a kettle!
but for the Grace 