Day 3

Wednesday, June 25,2025

Yesterday we stayed at GRYC in the 96F heat and humidity in the boat with the cats. They have found their hiding holes and sleep there during the day. We got some relief from the heat driving around trying to fix things on the boat.

Yesterday was spent troubleshooting the old Xantrex battery charger. Phil thought that it was broken so we went to a local marine store and picked up a new one. Phil worked on installing this and once it was installed it wouldn’t turn on and so we put that aside for the night after we ate Dinner to work on it today. It was nice to eat the warmed up cabbage rolls my niece Teagan made with rigatoni and salad left over from yacht club wine tasting event this past weekend.

One of the problems with the new battery charger is it was only for two bank battery bank, and we have a three bank system. Two banks for the house batteries, which is a total of four batteries, and one bank for our 2 start and windless batteries. This is a problem because the Xantrex battery charger is for a three bank system, and it was pretty overwhelming trying to think about how to wire the system for two banks. Vicki and Phil discussed it last night and Vicki wrote up diagrams.

This morning, I decided to go back to the house and do a load of clothes and Phil took the old Xantrex battery charger back to the house to check to see if it was would light up under testing. It did so we came back to the boat and George Schlaugh, our friend and electrical guru, came over and assisted Phil . He determined that the black wire from the 115 V plug was the neutral wire when it should’ve been the load wire. I’m not the person who understands this but have learned that the black wire is the load, black is neutral and green wire is ground and the usual way is to connect like colors. After lunch of tuna,fish salad sandwiches and some fruit, Phil had his dental appointment. While he was there, I returned the new battery charger. About 3pm, we went to Blystone Marine and picked up a ProNautic 12-60 P battery charger, which was for a three bank battery system and designed to be hard wired in. Yes we got this! Phil started installing this system as soon as we return to Katie O. Connecting it in some ways has been easier because it’s a wire in system like the old one. After connecting the power supply source wire to the GFI 115V outlet the battery charger is still not lighting up. We can’t figure out why despite our best efforts. We must have a short somewhere as the GFI Breaker keeps tripping but something else is going on. Phil and I were trouble shooting, talked to George on the phone until it was time to break to eat supper that Vicky fixed about 730pm. I appreciated her cooking!

Afterwards we went to Fairport Harbor Creamery which we highly recommend if you’re in the area.

It’s cooler than the last few days but still in the mid 80’s. It was very nice to take showers and relax.

We have our cats Lucy and Casper with us. Casper is recovering from falling off the boat Monday and hasn’t ventured out onto the deck. Lucy spends the day in the cubby under the chart table and enticed out with her favorite cat treat in the evening. They aren’t eating the wet food like usual, though Lucy is better than Casper. They are joining us in the V-berth. Good thing it’s a king size at the wide part of the V, they can join us and have room for everyone. Casper hasn’t been bothering our heads too much, so that’s great!!

Vicky wrapped sisal rope around the mast for Casper to scratch. Lucy is declawed. He hasn’t used it yet but we’ll see.

Plan for tomorrow is to get the battery charger working. The refrigeration runs off of 12volt (batteries) and even though we are plugged in to electricity, the battery charger and our 2 solar panels charge the batteries. Having one source of charging is putting a strain in the batteries so we really need to get this fixed soon. I turned off the refrigerator for tonight and have our perishable food in the clubhouse refrigerator.

I’m hoping that we can fix this before lunch and start checking the “T” connections from the cables from data sources, wind speed, boat speed and depth, wind direction and the angle to see if this is the cause of not receiving the data. It did work Monday. Not sure what happened to change it.

With all these troubles, it’s good we’re still home. Of course , we wish we didn’t have any of these problems.

For sailboat owners, have you come across these problems and how did you fix it? What are we missing?