A Rare Phasmid

Ocean-going sailing canoes. Traditional style. Using traditional navigation (stars and currents and wind only).  Powered by both sail and solar-powered electric-engine technology. Moored across from us at La Playa anchorage, San Diego. 

Keeping up with the maintenance of a traditional S. Pacific voyaging canoe. Deckhouse is constructed of bamboo.

We worked our way down to San Diego, after an orchestrated escape from the Pacific Mariner Yacht Club. We were three, 40-foot-plus sailing machines, who had all managed to squeeze into what amounted to an impossibly tight, jigsaw puzzle; three slips, meant for three boats, one-half our size. With sterns sticking out half way across the fairway, where it dead-ended in a shoal. There was no room to back out normally. Getting in was tricky enough. Getting out would be exponentially more difficult. Our plan was to wait for the boat directly across from us to back out, at high tide, then back into that slip and drive out in forward gear. The third boat would similarly back into our slip, and then repeat what we had done. Of course, this all required about five extra hands, from the yacht club, to help with line handling. Well, it went remarkably smoothly, considering the complexity of the geometries, and the low level of sobriety of our line-handling friends, at the yacht club.

We made three pleasant stops, on the way down to San Diego: the first at Newport Beach, where we were offered yet another convenient, gratis, end-tie at the Balboa Yacht Club for a night. We arrived there just as night was falling. Next day we moved to the anchorage at Newport Beach and stayed there for five days, in part because it was pleasant and comfortable and secure, and in part because there was an extreme wind event predicted for two of the five days we were there. A local phenomenon, known as Santa Ana winds, were predicted to cause localized destruction, with wind speeds of up to 80 knots. The anchorage was excellent; sticky mud bottom, and lots of room to swing on the hook. The winds reached 35 to 40 knots where we were. Nearby, however, higher winds caused widespread destruction, which included snapped-in-half, hefty, concrete telephone-line poles, landslides, and the usual tree-through-roof scenario common to this sort of weather.

We moved on after the Santa Ana event, to Dana Point, for an overnight stay at their glassy, outer harbor anchorage. The next morning we had a good wind-wave angle for a pleasant, 35-nautical-mile sail to Oceanside, where once again, we were offered a gratis night of moorage by the very hospitable (and low-key) Oceanside Yacht club. We rested up, and cleaned up, and took off early the following morning for Shelter Island, in San Diego Harbor. Here we took care of a few errands, reprovisioned, met up with some cruising friends of ours who were kind enough to guide us through rebuilding our engine's raw-water pump, and perhaps, more critically, finished troubleshooting an electrical glitch, which had us completely baffled for a month or so. We likened it to a phasmid--an apparition.

Here's what happened: we noticed that the new set of four batteries (400 amp hours total), that we had recently installed, were not performing well. Normally, we we can deplete about 200 amp hours (50% of a full charge) before we need to recharge the battery banks. Over time, a battery will lose its ability to perform at its full potential, and this is understandable, and due to sulphation, but a new set of batteries should perform at full potential with no problem for quite some time. What we were seeing was a loss of about 50% of full battery capacity. And that was strange, considering that the batteries were less than six months old. A loss of 50% would be normal at, say, six years. So something was wrong.

There is a logic to electrical troubleshooting, and it can be a tedious process. We start by looking for an electrical short, or a loose connection, or a corroded connection, or incorrect wiring, or a bad cell in a particular battery. But we could find no obvious problem. Finally, with the help of a very experienced marine electrician, in San Diego (we cried 'uncle'), who outfits electric-engine, battery-powered boats, and the help of tech support, at Trojan AGM batteries, we were able to sort out the enigma. And it went something like this: we have four, 6v batteries, and they are combined in such a way as to make two, separate, 12v sets (battery banks). Usually, when you buy new batteries, it's best to replace all the batteries at the same time; that way, they are all fresh and of equal capacity and potential. Typically, all the batteries will come from the same manufacturer's lot. But on occasion, two different lots, with different manufacture dates, will get mixed together. The batteries are all supposed to be fully charged and of equal capacity when they leave the distributor. But that may not be the case, if they were inadvertently pulled from different lots.

In our case two of the batteries were charged, initially, to about 50% of their full capacity, and two were charged to about 100%. If two 6v batteries are connected to make one, 12v set, and one of the batteries in that set is not charged, from the get-go, to full capacity, then the stronger battery will compensate for the weaker one to reach an averaged, charged state; but the full potential of that battery bank will never be attained. It will appear that there is an electrical problem, somewhere in the system.

It's rare that this sort of thing happens, but we're all about mysteries that are hard to solve, here on Anna. Anyway, we came up with a solution: we switched the batteries around by pairing up the two weaker, 6v batteries and fully charging them. Then paired up the two stronger, 6v batteries and fully charged them. We then tied all four, equally-charged batteries, together, to make up one, strong, 12v house bank. We now get full potential, and full capacity, out of all four batteries. And the electrical system is once again humming along just fine with an occasional zap of solar or wind energy to top off the battery banks and keep them happy.

...when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
--from the Sherlock Holmes series of stories, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Southern California, and San Diego in particular, has had odd weather, most recently. The days have been sunny and the air temperature around 62 degrees F. The nights have been rather cool: in the mid-thirties. We used our diesel-heating stove and had foul-weather gear on. Today it rained, poured, and the skies had dark thunderstorm clouds. The entrance to San Diego harbor was lit up in green water and heavy whitecaps. Lightening and waterspouts were threatened by NOAA. This is not your typical San Diego weather.

Anna leaves San Diego, for the Pacific west coast of Baja, Mexico on Wednesday morning, December 14th. We'll sail to Ensenada, via the Coronado Islands (Islas Los Cornados), possibly anchoring out at South Coronado, before continuing on to Ensenada the next morning and checking-in at the Customs office, at Ensenada, our first port of call in Mexican waters.