I got a text early in the morning from one of my friends that I used to work with at First Bank.
He said he and another friend were going to Traitors Cove and asked me to join them if I could.
I had been planning to make a trip over to Karta Bay this weekend, but the opportunity to catch up with old friends trumped that.
I had some things to do in town so I could not leave until the afternoon. I pulled out of my slip in Bar Harbor at about 1:30 PM.
The marine forecast was good, but the stretch of water between Grant Island and the entrance to Traitors Cove was actually pretty rough. My auto pilot could not keep up, so I was forced to hand steer for that section.
I arrived into the cove a little after 4 PM. I've been running pretty slowly lately in an effort to burn less expensive fuel.
I could see that the USFS dock was pretty plugged and there was no room for me, so I dropped anchor and was preparing to put my raft in the water. Before I could get my raft fully deployed my friend called me on the radio to let me know that a boat had left and there was now room for me at the dock. I quickly secured the raft, pulled my anchor, and headed into the dock.
I have about 3700 hours on my engines, all of which put on by me. When I got to the dock and got tied up something happened that has never happened before. My starboard engine would not shut down. The tachometer was showing 0 RPMs, the switch at the helm station was off, and the engine control breaker at the DC distribution panel was off, but still the engine ran.
A guy from one of the other boats at the dock immediately jumped on board to try to help. He had Starlink on his boat, which apparently provides not only Internet access but also cell phone access (via satellite). He called his mechanic and between them they figured out how to shut down the engine.
The friends that I was there to meet up with are camera averse, and do not like the world knowing what they are up to. So out of respect for them I only will publish one photo of the dock with all the boats there.
On Thursday morning, before I left town, the electrician installed a brand-new battery charger which charges the dedicated battery for the generator. Unfortunately, it did not take me long to determine that it was not working properly. I did manage to get the generator started, but after running it for about an hour, the voltage on the battery was showing at only about 5 volts and I could never get it started again after that.
I visited with my friends and spent Thursday night and Friday night there.
On Saturday morning I decided to start the main engines just to charge the batteries. I usually run the generator to charge batteries, but due to the charging problem I could not start the generator. The starboard engine started normally, but the port engine would not start. I ran the starboard engine for about 15 minutes and then managed to get the port engine started. Since I had no confidence that I could the engines started again I decided to head in right then.
I got back into my slip with no issues and the engines shut down normally.
Time to call the electrician to look at the charging problems and the mechanic to look at the engines.
53 nm logged for this trip.
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