Day 214, Year 8: On the Dock
Date: Wednesday, June 5, 2013
Weather: Sunny and Clear, High Temp in the Upper 60’s F
Location: Eel Pond, Woods Hole, Massachusetts
Windbird moved to the end of the dock at Woods Hole Marine this morning to plug in for a day or two. We are still trying to figure out the new batteries that Mark picked up in Rock Hall, Maryland on the way here. The new ones are AGM’s (versus gel cell or wet cell), the same kind we had previously, but we haven’t been able to get them fully charged. So our thinking was that going to a dock and plugging into shore power might accomplish that. But then Mark was reading some additional information from the company that makes the batteries and it says that these particular batteries will not fully charge until they have cycled at least 40 times. That means we have to let them fully discharge and recharge that many times. And we haven’t been doing that. We have recharged every day and not let the batteries discharge fully, so after our stint here on the dock we’ll let the batteries discharge fully before charging and wait a month or two to see if the batteries will fully charge then. Electrical systems on a boat are the trickiest for us and probably for most boaters. And it is very difficult and very expensive to find good boat electricians and sometimes reading the information about electrical systems seems more like Greek than English. But eventually we figure it out the problems (or learn to live with them) and I’m sure we’ll figure this one out as well.
