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First, Happy Mothers’ Day! The title of this post refers not to that. The featured image is of our mothers out with us sailing on Lake Erie years ago.

But, there was a lot of deadness this week. Happily, not the human kind. Nor the “man’s best friend” kind. Not even the “cute family of ducks that lives near the boat kind”. It was more like the kind of death we have become used to while living on a sailboat. First, we had the death of our dream of actually leaving New Zealand. You know that weather window Kim mentioned last week? Well on Wednesday, it looked really good. Then Thursday happened. The weather models all got updated and “poof”! No more window. This nasty low pressure system suddenly sprang up promising a lot of wind and a lot of waves, and, well… Actually, Whangarei is looking pretty good. Sooooo, we’re still here. Maybe next week!

The next kind of deadness was boat-related. The batteries. Now, if you don’t happen to live on a boat, your experience with dead batteries is likely limited to leaving the lights on in your car or discovering during a blackout that your flashlight batteries are toast. This isn’t that. No one is opening up the junk drawer to get some new AA batteries to power the boat. And AAA isn’t stopping by to give you a jump, either. No, we had to get creative. The lithium batteries that power our “house loads” died. When, you ask? Well, at 5 AM, of course. Our house loads are everything on the boat except the engine: lights, freezer, refrigerator, watermaker, water pumps, toilets. All the stuff that makes living on a boat not like camping, basically. Our batteries were at 39% when we went to bed and at 5 AM–nada. How did this happen, you ask? Well, I could nerd out for several paragraphs about boat electrical systems and lithium batteries, and battery management systems, and the effects of loads on battery cell voltage. But I will spare you. Turns out I know enough about it to explain how it happened but not enough to have kept it from happening in the first place.

Anyway, we charge our batteries from either our solar panels or the alternators on our engine. Did I mention it was 5 AM? So, no solar. So we started the engine. But the batteries didn’t charge. Because why? Because the alternators have to sense current in order to charge. And what do dead batteries not have? Current. Pull out the duct tape, MacGyver. Basically, I reversed the wiring on our DC-DC charger to trick the alternators into thinking the lithium bank had some current flowing. Voila! Batteries charging. And how did they end up going dead in the first place? Well, the “State of Charge” monitor we used got desynchronized from the actual state of charge of the batteries. So when we thought the batteries were at 39%, they were actually at more like 15%. Makes a difference. Those of you who know boats are probably wondering why we weren’t plugged into shore power, since we’re at a marina. Well, Meraviglia is a US boat. Which means her shore power electrical system is 110 Volt, just like your house. The rest of the world? 230 Volt. They don’t play nice. Personally, I feel like 230 Volt is a little more that twice as good as 110 Volt, right? We should switch. We just need to rewire the entire country. Have I mentioned the metric system?

So that was fun. Now, while we wait for an actual real weather window-that’s not a mirage-, I’ll see what other trouble I can get into. I decided to clean the struvite crystals out of the holding tank. Struvite is what builds up in tanks and hoses from urine and stool. Fun! Turns out vinegar does a pretty good job. I let the tank sensor soak for a few hours and it cleaned up great! So now, I just want to get about 10 gallons of vinegar. Then, when we do leave, I’ll put it in the holding tank and let the boat motion slosh it all around and let the magic happen!

I also repainted the helm pedestal. It’s aluminum and had gotten really corroded and all the paint flaked off. There was a lot of wire brushing and sanding and filling of pits and more sanding and then some painting. Looking pretty good!

Today’s Mothers’ Day, so happy Mothers’ Day to all who celebrate. Kim wants an omelette for breakfast and pasta for dinner, so there will be pasta making happening today!

While we wait.

Patiently.

For a window.