I ventured out to my simple little fishing boat for the 300th time this week, which might make you think I get a lot of use out of that boat. Leave the thinking to me because, first, you’re wrong and, second, I obviously haven’t been doing a lot of thinking lately so my reserves are full.
The boat hasn’t actually been in the lake in a very long time for a wide variety of reasons from the trailer falling off the hitch on the way to the ramp to the engine stubbornly refusing to start when it’s missing a little electricity. So mostly I just drive to the storage lot and tinker with the various problems that boats invent.
The latest entertainment has involved the brand new batteries not doing the one thing I ask of them – send electricity to the engine. No matter how many times I replaced the batteries (don’t ask), they would always run down.
From this behavior, I eventually deduced that electricity was leaking out of the battery while I wasn’t even using the boat. With that hypothesis and a bagful of tools, I headed to the boat last week to fix it and keep those pesky electrons in the battery until I wanted them to come out and play. All I had to do was take my handy dandy multimeter and measure the current flow when nothing was turned on. Sneaky, yes, but that’s what I planned to do.
Last week’s lesson was that ohms are not amps followed shortly by homework that discovered my multimeter was apparently the only model ever built that did not include an ammeter! I feel special. Amazon delivered a proper multimeter yesterday thus justifying my trip to the boat today.
Here’s the way this little exercise is supposed to work. You unhook the battery cables from the negative terminal of the battery and then attach the ammeter to the cable and the terminal thus bridging the gap. You can then measure the flow of current which should be darn small when nothing is turned on. Knowing that electrons are leaking all over the place, I expected to see current flowing. I would then remove and replace fuses one at a time. When the current stopped flowing I would have found the evil piece of electronics that’s been stealing my power.
But first you have to hook it all up which in this case means you have unhook a few things. The first task is to get the battery out of the battery compartment. The *&%^ engineers always design a boat battery compartment to maximize bruised knuckles and foul language. They did a hell of a job on this boat.
After wiping the blood off my hands, I set about disconnecting the cables from the ground terminal. A handy 1/2 inch box wrench is just the tool for such a job. A lot of joint engineering went into the whole battery setup. PowerPoint slides and blueprints were probably involved. The *&%^$ engineers once again outdid themselves. A 5/8 inch box wrench perfectly fits the task as it snugly grips the nut while simultaneously spanning exactly the distance between the positive and negative battery terminals.
I am a quick thinker. Doubt me? Listen and learn. Electricity moves at approximately the speed of light. My mind moves even more quickly (yes it exceeds the supposedly constant speed of light) because the thought clearly formed “This is gonna hurt!” even before it actually did.
Now I tend to see a silver lining in everything and in this case seeing that was actually pretty easy because the silver of melted metal gleamed brightly as it cooled on the positive terminal. I can say two things for certain. I am now officially a welder and that nut is never coming off that terminal. Yup, should be a nice solid connection now protected from all corrosion.
Figuring I might need to make another trip to the battery store, I tested the voltage on the post experiment battery. Voltage was actually a little higher than before the light show. The wonders of science.
I finished hooking up my ammeter and then crawled under the console where I intentionally dislocated my shoulder and snapped my wrist so that I could get my hand to the fuse box where the *&^%&% engineers had inconveniently placed it. I then proceeded to pull out the fuses one at a time. Miraculously, the current dropped after I pulled out the very first fuse. Knowing that I’m more handsome than lucky (and I’m not that good looking to begin with), I knew that something must be wrong with my technique (that wouldn’t be a first) so I continued to pull every other fuse out and then replace them after observing the current draw. Shockingly, I discovered that the first circuit was indeed the culprit!
All I had to do now was trace the wires from the fuse to whatever it powered because the &*^&%*& engineers didn’t bother to provide a wiring schematic. I carefully traced the purple wire into a Gordian knot of 17,563 other wires. Several months later, I figured that the wire eventually went into the dashboard. Not helpful.
I then slid out from under the dash, rearranged my tendons, ligaments and joints and started flipping switches with the evil fuse removed. I eventually discovered the power thief.
The GPS chartplotter!
For the modern boater, a GPS is a delightful piece of technology but I never really needed it since I never seem to leave the storage yard. I disconnected it. Of course if I had been like most boaters I would have disconnected the unit every time I left the boat and this problem never would have appeared but the bracket designed by the (&^^(^(&* engineers is so cumbersome that I never bothered.
As I pondered my evil GPS, I recalled that on boat as large as this behemoth, you really need at least two GPS chartplotters in case you can’t find your way the three feet from the front of the boat to the helm without help. I further recalled that I had a second GPS in the storage locker along the starboard side. I navigated my way over there using nothing but the sun and stars and opened the storage compartment.
I woke up several hours later with the GPS in my hand, having overcome being overcome with gas fumes. I recalled that every time I took the cover off the boat there were a lot of fumes because the &*%(*& engineers put the tank vent under the cover rather than in the open air.
I noticed that the GPS was quite dirty. As I like to keep a boat in Bristol condition, I grabbed a paper towel and wiped it off. Years of grime came away with a single swipe. I recalled my high school chemistry and knew that a solvent must be at work. The most common solvent around watercraft is gasoline. I looked into the storage compartment and saw that the carpeting (why do they carpet boats????) was soaked with something that might be water or might be gas. I threw some paper towels in and soaked up a bit.
I then returned to the helm with my extra GPS and found that the &%*&$* engineers had used two different types of connections on the two GPS units even though they were from the same manufacturer and installed as original equipment on the boat. So much for that experiment.
I pondered (I ponder a lot when at the boat) my options and decided that unplugging the power stealing unit was the simplest solution and, believe it or not, that’s the solution I went with!
I wrestled the battery back into the incredibly inaccessible space and wondered how I was going to find the source of the likely fuel leak. I say “likely” because I still couldn’t be sure that the liquid was gasoline Yes, the boat smelled but they all do. When I brought the paper towels to my nose there was some fuel smell but not as strong as I expected. I looked all over the boat to see if I could find a leak. Again, this is a simple boat so you wouldn’t think there would be many places to hide a leak or even a gas tank but those &%(*^) engineers are masters at putting things where you can’t see them. I gave up and drove home.
As I was unloading the truck, I pulled out the wet paper towels and had a Really Bad Idea. I grabbed a bucket, put the paper towels in it and found a butane lighter.
“Hey mister! What’re you doing?” screamed one of the little neighborhood demons who haunts me every night with hours of blood curdling screams.
“I’m doing science young man. Come and take a look. Say, aren’t you the lad who was kicking a soccer ball against my wall the other night for an hour even after I asked you to stop.”
“Hahahahahahahaha! That’s right, that was me!”
“Well step a little closer to the bucket then.”
I lit the paper towels and I’ll just say they went up in a lot more heat and smoke than water soaked towels normally do.
“Now go show your mommy your singed eyebrows Johnny and GET OFF MY GRASS!”
Just another day of non-boating.
