Battery Charger

Days on cruise:  269

Yesterday Joe from “Felix Marine” showed up to take a look at our faulty battery charger and tell us what’s needed. Among other things, he says it’s probably original to the boat (1986) as it contains transformers, which are very old technology. Anyone surprised to hear we need a new battery charger? We weren’t.

For those geeks/nerds (like us) interested in such things, the battery charger is what converts the power coming from either a shore power electrical cord or the stand-alone generator (when anchored out) into stored energy in our 8D house and starter batteries. Without a functioning battery charger, the only way we can keep these batteries running (until we get the new battery charger either Friday or Monday) is to run the engines for an hour or so twice a day, during which time our two 65 amp alternators can re-charge the batteries. Otherwise the batteries will discharge so far that we’ll be unable to start the engines. Starters use a lot of power! And 8D batteries are large (about 150 pounds each) and expensive, so we don’t want to harm them by letting them discharge further than is prudent.

Legacy Harbour Marina is conveniently located in downtown Fort Myers, and the grocery store, drug store, liquor store and lots more are within 2-3 blocks. So we’ll stay here for a week, work on boat projects, exercise regularly, as well as enjoy some of the local sights and people.