(posted 04/30/24)
We are motoring all day today. At 1230, we are about 140 miles from San Blas, about 50 miles west of Mazatlan, and 120 miles south east of Cabo. We have fairly calm seas, and we are making about 7.5 knots speed over ground. We have about 2.5 knots wind on the nose apparent, which means we have about 5 knots true wind from behind us. Water temperature is up to 76.5 degrees F. Our current prediction for arrival time is 0700 (+/- 3 or 4 hours) when we get closer, we will slow down to time it better for the tide.
We have seen some dolphins, and rays jumping out of the water, and Reneé saw some orcas.
We have RADAR & AIS, to watch for other boats and ships, so far we have seen very few, none closer than 4 miles.
Well….. the best laid plans…. About 1330, all three chart plotters died, ok that’s happened before, but they didn’t restart. Not the first time it the second.
We have decided to go Mazatlan. We will anchor outside, we have done this before. Admittedly, with chart plotters and depth sounders, in daylight. In the meantime, we are using Navionics Boating App on our iPads and iPhone. This is our backup.
After a few minutes we got the chart plotters back on, but we are still going to Mazatlan.
I suspect that the problem may be related to battery voltage. We are fully charged, the solar panels are in the sun and the engine (with alternator) has been running non stop, battery voltage is on the high side, around 15 volts.
Text I sent to family to let them know that we are back in normal communications again.
TL:DR (Too Long: Didn’t Read), we are in Mazatlan, and our communications are back to normal.
Well, things did not go quite as planned. We got underway at about 5 am, with a bit more wind the expected and less sleep (thanks to the party boat that was still going strong when we got up at 4:30!).
The wind was a bit much and the waves made for an uncomfortable start, but after a couple of hours they calmed down. We sailed for a few hours then the wind went away (the life of a sailor, either too much, not enough, or from the wrong direction!).
We motored through the day, and as we did the new electronics randomly shut down, either completely or just the comunications with the autopilot. Typically what we did when they shut down is go turn them back on, and then it would work for a while, sometimes 15 minutes sometimes for a couple of hours. No particular pattern.
About 1:30 on the second day (yesterday as I am writing this), they shut down and would not restart, we looked at where we were. We have Navionics Boat App on our iPhones and iPads, which uses the same charts as came with our new chart plotters, (since we have the iPads with GPS antennas, we can use them as backups to our chart plotters). We were about 140 miles from San Blas (our destination), 125 miles southeast of Cabo, and 50 ish miles west of Mazatlan. That might not sound like very far in a car, but we are on a boat and we only go about 6 miles per hour. We elected to divert to Mazatlan. After about 10 minutes or so, we restarted the chart plotters and continued our course to Mazatlan.
We arrived in the area about 8 pm, and it was pretty dark. Our plan was to wait for the moon rise (10:22 pm) and anchor between an island and Mazatlan.
Well, some friends (Joe and Vanessa Munday) had seen us on Marine Traffic and sent us a text, we were in cell range by then and suggested we anchor next to them inside the harbor which had plenty of room, flat water and lots of light. We dropped anchor between 10:30 and 11 pm.
I restarted our Starlink system and we are back to normal communications again.
We will stay here a few days, probably move to a marina on Monday, and get water and diesel. Then after we get something figured out on the electronics, we will head south to San Blas and Puerto Vallarta.
Regarding the electronics, what I suspect is the problem is battery voltage. We have Lithium batteries, and their voltage is higher than regular batteries (12.5 approximately vs 14 volts for the Lithium). We also have 1100 watts of solar, that is two panels of 550 watts each that have their own charge controllers, MPPT 100/50, which means that each panel and controller can charge at up to 50 amps to our batteries. The engine was running (and had been for almost all the time since we left our anchorage at 5 am), and it has an alternator that can put out up to 110 amps. The alternator has a regulator that monitors temperature as well as battery status and limits how much current it puts out to prevent overheating. When we got to the boat in February, I worked with Battleborn tech support (battery company that I bought most of my charge stuff from as well as the batteries (GREAT SUPPORT!) and updated all of the firmware and software for all the controllers.
In any case, when the system was shutting down I was looking at anything that might have an impact on them, the only thing that seemed out of normal to me was that the battery voltage was on the high side (15.2 VDC). Intermittent problems are very hard to diagnose and fix, and this is a complicated issue. On Monday, I will be communicating with Battleborn tech support to see if we can get to the bottom of this.
