Ever since we put the boat back in the water after the haulout we’ve had some leaking at the stuffing box. (This is where the prop shaft passes through the hull.)
The only way we could address this is to open an access panel above it. The access panel is in the lazarette, under a bank of batteries of course.
In preparing to get in there, We found that all 4 of the batteries in that bank have ginourmous cracks in the top of the case. Likely due to some questionable charging practices on my part. Bank 2 is still in good shape, but they’re really old batteries so we’re going to replace all 8 of them.
So after some battery box destruction and considerable effort (they’re 77 pounds a piece) we got the batteries out.
The good news is that access to the stuffing box was excellent, and we were able to fix the leak. We just tightened it up slightly and then we motored around for awhile and verified that it was operating correctly.
looking good Bella Star!
ReplyDeleteUpdate: Aaron emailed Rolls to see if they had thoughts as to why the cases cracked. And it turns out the batteries were over 15 years old! Rolls sure knows how to make a battery, that's for sure.
ReplyDelete-Nicole