TripSailor.com® Sailing Blogs

We left Block Island on Wednesday July 2, and ended up motoring in fog towards Buzzards Bay which separates the Massachusetts mainland from the west end of Cape Cod and the ElizabethIslands.  Having purchased a federal fishing permit online and organized his fishing equipment while we were at Block Island, when we were sufficiently off-shore Randall set up a rod and trolled behind the boat.  After about an hour he hooked his first fish of the year and landed a decent-sized Greater Amberjack.  This was a great excitement to Randall and wee had lightly-fried, fresh fish strips for lunch and enjoyed a couple of subsequent meals on this much-heralded catch.  That evening, we anchored near the entrance of Padanaram (pay-dan-air-am) harbor, close to the huge mooring field of sailboats managed by the New Bedford Yacht Club (NBYC).  Rather confusingly the charts show the local town as South Dartmouth.  As we enjoyed the cooler weather, we were treated to the sight of Wednesday evening yacht races just outside the harbor. Less encouragingly, by next morning it was evident that despite all the motoring, the engine starter battery was not being charged by the new alternator and it we were only just keeping the refrigeration and chart-plotter going based on the wind and solar power when under power.  With 30 knot winds forecast for the next afternoon, on Thursday morning we had to jump-start the engine to move to a mooring ball.  We knew that we would sleep much better in the high winds without having to worry about the anchor holding.  We made use of the NBYC launch service and onshore found a boatyard that was willing to trouble-shoot our alternator problem even on the afternoon before the July 4^th holiday.  There was agreement that all was not well with the alternator (including the fact that a 100 amp fuse had been blown) and they promised to take it and bench-test it on Monday.  It was encouraging that they seemed to be curious about why it was not working and what was wrong…not just pushing to replace it and be done, so we settled down for a long-weekend on the mooring.  A few fireworks on the horizon on Thursday night lifted our spirits, along with greeting from a fellow cruiser, Trevor, who stopped by having heard us commenting on our alternator problems on the radio. We spent the morning of July 4^th, completing the wiring for our new mast-lights (which thrillingly were seen to work that night) and in the afternoon we were invited to visit Trevor and Jennifer’s boat (a much newer, larger, and very beautiful version of ours).  From them we learned many useful things about sailing in the area and, hearing from a friend of theirs who was a few weeks behind us and had been caught in many thunderstorms, it was confirmed that we had made the right decision leaving Florida when we did even though not everything on the boat was finished. It turned out that Trevor was a retired electrical engineer who was fascinated by our electrical problems and he returned to out boat with us to explore our problems further.  Eventually it was determined that the new alternator had not been installed correctly and so had never worked properly.  Judicious use of a sturdy button with the center drilled out (thank goodness for the odd buttons in my sewing kit) as an insulating washer fixed the problem and Trevor’s tests and explanations gave us plenty of confidence that things were looking up.  Running the engine for a little while did wonders for the battery charge and Trevor’s kindness and wisdom was celebrated long after he had left our boat.  We watched the panorama of more than a dozen July 4^th fireworks displays on a 300 degree arc around the bay finally hopeful that our electrical problems were solved…or at least greatly reduced. (We will replace the button with an appropriate washer at the first opportunity.)