Lorraine Escher

Boat batteries have arrived!

Six army green boxes. They are compact and have a no nonsense look to them. Polished. Alert. They weigh about 130 lbs each.

The arrival of the Victron batteries represents the last item on an extensive list of refits. We have stopped shopping for spares, and supplies. With the new batteries, we are ready to leave for the Bahamas, pending an appropriate weather window.

The batteries also provide us with freedom from having to use our generator on a near-constant basis. Our generator operates in a hard-cased shell under Betty’s bed. The generator runs on diesel, which we’d prefer to conserve for motoring.

Below are some pictures that I took today, that hopefully, captured a sense of the excitement we felt.

First, Rick and Dave loaded the batteries into our dinghy and brought them out to our boat. This was no small feat. In the dinghy they were transporting almost 800 lbs of batteries.

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The batteries arrived in six cardboard boxes. Conveniently, the batteries have handles. In this picture, Dave prepares a battery to hoist up to our boat.

The batteries were hoisted very carefully.

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The hoist, being careful not to drop a battery into the water. (L-R Dave, Rick and Paul (7)).

Here is a picture of our kids with the new batteries.

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Celebrating the arrival of the Victron batteries. Paul (7), Betty (10), and Henry (4),

When the new batteries were in our saloon, it was time to remove the old Bosch car batteries. Here is a picture of Rick carrying one of the old batteries out the door.

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Old Bosch battery leaves the boat with Rick. The new, sleek Victron batteries are in the foreground.

With the old batteries removed, and no power on the boat, Dave and Rick worked quickly to install the new batteries.

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Rick (left) and Dave (right).

Here they are installed.

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New batteries are installed under the seats in our saloon.

We couldn’t have hoped for a smoother installation.

But, the batteries did not last, and we replaced them with Lithium batteries in 2018.

We removed the batteries after we noticed a terrible smell when we were hauled-out in Trinidad. The smell grew worse during the day. We looked everywhere to locate the source of the smell.

That night, Rick went to bed, and five minutes later sat bolt upright. He looked at our battery bank and they had begun to overheat in what is called ‘thermal runaway’.

The kids and I immediately left the boat. Rick and two security guards removed the bad batteries, which could have exploded. The batteries were placed well away from boats, near a garbage, to be dealt with in the morning.

In the night, someone took the batteries. I guess there is recyclable content in the batteries that someone wanted.

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