Complete loss of power around Mendocino pt CA

[Robinms]

The weather wasn’t great- 20 to 27 knots with 3-4 meter waves and a general confused sea. Not at all what was predicted on any weather map, even the the weather broadcast over our radio said 7knots with 2-3 meter waves. Oh well, we all know that weather is what it is and you just deal with what your dealt. It was about 5pm and we pulled the sails in because we didn’t know how much worse it was going to get and with the waves knocking us around the sails we’re swinging hard with all the rolling. We had just brought in the main and Genoa when there was the dreaded alarm- either secondary bilge alarm or power. It was the BMS for our lithium batteries. I took over the helm, we were hand steering at that point as the autopilot couldn’t keep up with all the different wave directions. I noted our compass heading and held to it while my husband went below to see if he could figure out what was happening. He grabbed flashlights and my phone so we had intermittent chart plotter info. Then as the sun faded the fog moved in and the light for our compass stopped working!! I put on an led head light so I could read the compass and keep our 120 degree heading and keep off shore. Unfortunately, no power ment no running or steaming lights so we did 2-3 hour watches, hand steering as no autopilot, and sharp eye out for other boats since we had no radar. After about 6 hours, my husband switched our power over to the starter battery and we had power and all instruments for the final 3 hours. It took 30 minutes to discover the next day, that a loose electrical connection had overheated and caused the BMS to shut down the battery bank. We replaced the slightly melted wire and made sure it was tight and sanded the light switch connection for the compass light and all was good. Some things to think about? Make sure your flashlights are all charged as well as your phones. Phone batteries don’t last very long when having use GPS or your chart plotter apps. I now have our B&G chart plotter app on my phone because previously I figured it wasn’t necessary as my husband had it on his, but with no way to charge phones we needed mine after his went dead.

[nightowle]

Close call and some good lessons were learned. Thanks for passing them along. Glad you're around to fight another day!

[JPA Cate]

Most folks who come close to Cape Mendocino have a story to tell, Robin.

Seems like your adventure all came out right in the end. Aren't led headlights wonderful! I sure like mine.

You said you were having weather in the mid 20's for wind. It might have been more comfortable if you sailed on just the headsail for the evening. Even only one sail can move you along and serve to steady the motion off the wind. One tactic we have used is to use the main reefed pretty flat (one or two reefs, slab reefing) and over-trimmed a bit, with the preventer on it so it stays put, again, for the purpose of roll damping in a confused sea.

Also, as a general rule, we don't, never have, motor-sailed much. A consequence of this is that if we had had to get north in that weather, we would have not had the motor on, but continued sailing, tacking, going the long way, uphill. It works for us.

Lucky you to get your autopilot going so fast! Our longest time without autopilot was about 2 weeks on the trip back from HI to CA, when it died from exhaustion 3 days north of Kauai. In some ways, the 3 days without, from the Tuamotus to Tahiti (another death) was harder, with all the coral atolls around.

Enjoy your time in my home state.

Ann

[requiem]

That sounds like quite the adventure!

A few thoughts come to mind...

- I keep a Navisafe LED tricolor in my bag; they have a variety of mount types and its purpose is to replace a dead nav light if needed. Add a white one and it might stand in during a complete power loss.

- You don't strictly need to have the phone on continuously. Once I know the course to steer, I only need to wake it up every x minutes, where x is an appropriate position-fixing interval. The batteries should last much longer if you treat it like the old paper chart days.

- Along with spare nav devices (phone/tablet/etc) it's good to have sufficient backup power to handle emergency lighting and nav tools. For me, that's a large Anker power bank and spare batteries for things that take AAs/AAAs.

- Do you have a storm sail or some other way to heavily reef (e.g. furling main or jib)? I'd prefer to have one up not only for stability, but also because of the risk of the engine going out due to sediment, etc. getting stirred up and clogging the fuel filter.

- How useful was the B&G plotter app when the main instruments didn't have power? Doesn't it rely on them being up and running?