Terrified? Snowflakery...?

zoidberg

zoidberg

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I noticed this on't sidebar on my way here tonight....


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It seems to me that if one is the sort who gets terrified at being unable to switch on the lights, perhaps being offshore after dark is not your thing.

On the other hand, if the majesty of 'dark skies' and more constellations than you can count truly makes your heart beat faster, or the sight of dolphins' streaks of phosphorescence past the bows in the night has you hopping from foot to foot like a young child..... or you gather the quiet and the calm in your soul as a precious memory to be savoured..... then maybe offshore sailing without benefit of 'lecky ( voluntary or otherwise ) is a joy to you.

Welcome. Join us.....

☺
 
zoidberg said:
I noticed this on't sidebar on my way here tonight....


49230019593_115e887e10_n.jpg



It seems to me that if one is the sort who gets terrified at being unable to switch on the lights, perhaps being offshore after dark is not your thing.

On the other hand, if the majesty of 'dark skies' and more constellations than you can count truly makes your heart beat faster, or the sight of dolphins' streaks of phosphorescence past the bows in the night has you hopping from foot to foot like a young child..... or you gather the quiet and the calm in your soul as a precious memory to be savoured..... then maybe offshore sailing without benefit of 'lecky ( voluntary or otherwise ) is a joy to you.

Welcome. Join us.....

☺
Click to expand...

I had it happen to me, in sadler 34, under sail, fog/murky weather, at just before dawn, approaching Bray Harbour, all lights/instruments failed because of flat service battery.
Luckily, the engine battery was isolated & had just enough juice to get engine running so services came back online.
Not really a problem "offshore",where there are no CI rocks to bump into, but a bit concerning particularly when tired after a long night passage from Needles.
 
"total loss of power" has happened to me twice.

Once when I was anchoring at night at the top of the Kyles of Bute in an old Westerly 33 - smoke started pouring out of the switch panel so I had to disconnect the batteries to prevent a fire - no lights, no engine. Fortunately we were with another boat so we rafted up, started the genny and I spent the evening tracing the fault and re-soldering the switch panel.

The second time was when I first got my AWB - overnight passage from Split to Mali-Losinj in Croatia when I discovered oil swilling around in the engine compartment - stopped the engine to investigate and discovered that what looked like litres of the stuff was actually just a couple of cups - the engine still had plenty and we had spare oil - but the engine wouldn't re-start - was a wavy windless night, so there was a bit of mild panic until I eventually got the engine re-started. We headed for Mali Losinj and in the cold light of day it was nowhere near as bad as I imagined.

In both cases I was too focussed on fixing the problems to be terrified.
 
zoidberg said:
I noticed this on't sidebar on my way here tonight....


49230019593_115e887e10_n.jpg



It seems to me that if one is the sort who gets terrified at being unable to switch on the lights, perhaps being offshore after dark is not your thing.

On the other hand, if the majesty of 'dark skies' and more constellations than you can count truly makes your heart beat faster, or the sight of dolphins' streaks of phosphorescence past the bows in the night has you hopping from foot to foot like a young child..... or you gather the quiet and the calm in your soul as a precious memory to be savoured..... then maybe offshore sailing without benefit of 'lecky ( voluntary or otherwise ) is a joy to you.

Welcome. Join us.....

☺
Click to expand...

It seems maybe you're mistaking what you read the press (to get you to click more) for the real world.... ;)
 
For the first 10 years of my sailing offshore & coastal I had a PP9 in the echo sounder & if sailing at night I took a 12 V battery which was placed at the base of the mast & wired to the tricolour at the mast head. The Sestral grid compass had a ( now defunct) beta light for illumination. When the 12 V battery went flat, we just carried on. I always had plenty of PP9s though. The Stuart Turner was hand start.(sometimes!!!)
 
We were comfortably motor-sailing across the North Sea in the middle of the night, with a friend as extra crew, when some alarm came on and I could see that volts were down to 11 point something. I switched everything off I could, lights, fridge, plotter, and powered up the old GPS which would only take a trickle and then got down to some serious panicking. The boat was only a few years old and anyway we were motoring. I looked around the engine compartment with a torch and saw a piece of loose cable. It was quite small but there was a terminal nearby with nothing on it. It seemed a good idea to reunite these, which I did, with a gratifying effect, and we continued on our way, shaken but not stirred.
 
Like other oldies here. Sailed E coast to CIs with a battery combo nav light and no other electrics, other than torches. Maybe fewer ships around then? So, not exactly a power cut...Just without.
Also, sailed a distance in the med. Nothing worked on the boat, so again, only torches.
 
I had a power failure which was a bit disconcerting, the batteries were kippered and the GPS stopped working which was fair enough but the speed reading, all unnoticed switched itself to kilometres per hour. I couldn't understand how she was going so fast until it finally dawned on me.
It was when I checked the battery voltage that I was terrified : three new 120 amphour batteries -that's going to hurt.
 
We noticed an engine panel power failure when, having just got the sails up, the engine stop button would not work. (Mrs H wisely checked my foolish initial reaction - to stop it by other means - as had I done so we could not have easily restarted it.) We motored to our destination and eventually found a corroded contact - hidden within the heatshrink - where the panel feed is taken from the engine below the H/E. I now give its replacement and other connections in that vulnerable location a periodic tug.
 
It used to be very common 50+ years ago when sailing from Portsmouth to France at night to only put your lights on when you saw someone elses. I had a 25' wooden boat then with seagull and a small 12v car battery. .Best of all sailing down a moonbeam on a clear calm night
J
 
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