Bringing Liberty Call into the 21st Century

Liberty Call was built in 1973. That makes her 42 years old as of this writing. Her age has never really bothered me and I didn't really think a lot about that until the recent battery incident when I got up close and personal with some 40 year old wiring. It was at this point I started to see her in a new light. She needs some upgrades!

I've already started electrically. All interior lights and running lights have been converted to LED. The steaming light, spreader lights and the Tricolor/Strobe/Anchor light at the top of the mast are still old style filaments and it really shows with the new battery charger. Example:

Charger remote displaying EVERY interior light on as well as my two Caframo fans running at High Speed.

Just the Steaming light, spreaders and tricolor light are on.

The energy savings are really incredible. Once I am able to replace the remaining lights with LEDs, my two new house batteries should last nearly ten years. Plus having a digital smart charger will ensure that the batteries remain at their most optimum state.

If something bad will happen on a boat, its usually at night

or...  An old charger leads to a battery explosion

So there I was, minding my own business, sleeping peaceably at 0230 in the morning on a Saturday when I awake to the most awful smell you can imagine. Think of two dozen eggs left in the sun for weeks and broken all at once right under your nose. Kinda like that.
   After opening all the hatches in the boat as quickly as possible, my thoughts went immediately to a propane leak, but since the propane alarm wasn't, well, alarming, that eased my mind somewhat. I checked the main propane tank and it was shut off at the valve, so no leak there. It was at this point that I remembered that only one other thing on the boat could produce a smell like that, and it was the batteries and only if something catastrophic had occurred. With trepidation, I very carefully opened up the battery compartment panel and lo and behold, a battery had split itself apart. Now mind you, these aren't the new AGMs I had purchased a while back, this was one of the old ones that I still had installed and had been procrastinating removing since they were still in good condition. It seems that Fate would have its way with me for being lazy.
   After spraying everything in the battery compartment down with a baking soda and water mix to neutralize all the battery acid that was everywhere, I cleaned everything up and pulled the bad battery out. I left it in the cockpit in its battery box, which kept the battery from leaking all over the boat. I didn't want to put the battery on the dock for fear it might leak into the marina. In the morning I inspected the damage. The battery was quite a mess.

As you can see, one whole side of the battery blew itself apart. Thankfully, it didn't do any lasting damage in the battery compartment.

So with a half blasted battery sitting in the hazmat locker at the marina, I pulled the other two batteries and both of them had boiled themselves dry. Since I had just serviced them less that a month ago, that could mean only one thing. The old charger had bit the dust finally and cooked all my old batteries. But, as Providence would have it, I had already purchased all the necessary items to wire up my new charger and install my new batteries. This weekend has been a very busy weekend.

My first order of business was installing my new Sterling Pro Charge Ultra. It has the capability to operate as a 12v power supply even when not hooked up to a battery bank which is a very nice feature. I pulled the old charger out of the small engine compartment. It was an old Sea Ranger charger and it must have weighed at least 50lbs! Trying to remove something that heavy from a bulkhead while keeping from crashing on top of the engine all the while contorted like a performer from Cirque de Soleil is no easy task.

After that fun experience, I mounted the new Charger at the foot of the quarterberth so it would be easier to access.  I ran new wiring from the AC panel to the charger as well as from the charger to the positive fuse bus as well as the grounding bus. 

Here it is, and it sure is purdy!

This picture was taken before I added the case ground wire, remote control wire and the battery temperature sensor wire and securing the wiring to the bulkhead. 

 After several hours of pulling old wire, (START RANT) cursing the name of whoever installed this electrical system (I swear, if I ever find out who wired this boat, I will have some not so friendly choice words for them)(RANT OVER), and replacing the runs with properly crimped and supported wiring.

Again, photo taken mid install, but you can see the fuse block on the right I talked about here, And on the left is one of two ground buses that i will install. You can see the difference in the wiring quality i was ranting about earlier. On the far left of the ground bus, you will see a very nice, neatly crimped and heat shrinked wire, the other three are nasty, but since I can only do so much in a day, they stay until I can get to them. Which will be very soon.

The boat is now back under 12v power after two days of darkness. Boy it sure is nice to have lights and running water again.