Category Archives: Maintenance

New Batteries!

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New Dyno batteries in cabin

After all the charging problems we had on our June cruise, we decided to replace all our house batteries. Here are the six new Dyno batteries sitting in the main cabin of Phoenix, ready to be lowered to the engine room.

As readers of this blog know, we had continual problems with charging our batteries on our June cruise due to a few worn-out batteries in our house bank. It goes without saying that we should have replaced the 5-year-old batteries before we left Anacortes, but we thought we’d be able to get by a little longer before we shelled out our cash. Batteries are one of the major expenses on a powerboat. At any rate, Jim recently made a trip to Anacortes to buy new batteries and replace the bad ones.

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Dent Island Cruise Wrap-Up

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sunrise anacortes marina

The glow of the morning sunrise was a stark contrast to the dim early morning light on boats in Anacortes Marina.

Due to some of the issues on our Dent Island cruise, we got back to Anacortes Marina a few days later than we planned. Because we had to be back in Bend, we had only a few days to clean up the boat and get things in order after our cruise. The item of highest importance, needless to say, was doing more serious testing to determine the status of our house batteries.

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July 2 – Telegraph Harbour to Ganges

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leaving telegraph harbour

It was a gorgeous morning as we left Telegraph Harbour. This is the view back to the marina, shown on the right in this photo.

Thankfully, it was cooler this morning. Which was great after it had been so hot for the past three days. The forecast was good, so we decided to continue south and stop at Montague Harbour. We wanted to try anchoring tonight to see if the batteries would hold a charge overnight.

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June 22 – Pender Harbour to Squirrel Cove

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Squirrel Cove Store

Squirrel Cove is located on Cortes Island in Desolation Sound, B.C. There is a small dock and store on the shore, but the anchorage is located beyond. We can use our dinghy to get to the store. When we passed the Squirrel Cove store on our way to the anchorage, it was low tide. It was one of the lowest tides of the year.

Last night when we ran the generator in Pender Harbour, we noticed that the battery monitor indicated we had lost more charge during the afternoon than normal. Also the charging usually starts out in a bulk mode when the batteries are discharged, and this didn’t happen when our charging started. So, now what? Is our battery monitor failing? Or is there a problem with our batteries?

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Moving On

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harbour chandlery

Harbour Chandler in Nanaimo has lots of serious boating and fishing gear.

It took all day, but Jim thinks he finally has enough fluid back in our cooling system so that we can safely run our engine. After he flushed the heat exchanger and reassembled the cooling system, he wasn’t able to get all the fluids back into the system. He thinks this is because he ended up with an air bubble or bubbles in the system when he put things back together.

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In Nanaimo

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nanaimo from walkway

Looking back from the Nanaimo Harbourfront Walkway, the city of Nanaimo sparkles.

We’re on our third day at Port of Nanaimo. Jim finished cleaning out the heat exchanger, but is still in the process of adding the fluids back into the cooling system. He had to remove fluids in order to clean the heat exchanger. After three days in the engine room, he is ready for a break!

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