I needed a day to fix some things. The night before I noticed that our house bank batteries had dropped to 8.3 volts, clearly something was wrong. I switched the main battery A-B switch to connect both battery banks to gather, started the diesel so that it would charge up both banks (my starting bank didn’t need it, but the house bank surely did). I let it run for about 45 minutes until the house bank got to 11 ½ volts and shut down the engine. It was dark, it was about 10 pm and in curtesy to the neighbors I didn’t want to run it longer than necessary. But the question is why weren’t they charged?
The house bank is charged from two sources, the solar panels and the wind generator and the wind generator ran all day yesterday at anchor. I went to bed figuring I’d fix it tomorrow, but the possible failure modes, single device and multiple devices, kept rolling around in my head. The solar panels should have charged them, but we were at sail yesterday all day and maybe the sails covered up the panels with shadows, but even so the wind generator should have supplied the needed charge as well. It was a calm motionless night on anchor, as I drifted off to sleep, I heard the wind generator start to turn and jumped out of my bunk, slid the companionway hatch open and looked at the wind generator, there is a small red LED on the bottom that lights up when it starts supplying power to charge the batteries, but the LED was not lit, I checked the circuit breaker, it was on, I grabbed my DVM (Digital Volt Meter) which was with my underwear… Ya sure you think that’s weird ? Where do you keep your DVM when your cruising? Not so weird now, uh? I went out to the port side lazarette, opened it, (this is were the connections from the batteries to the wind generator are) and measured the voltage at the connector, I got zero, zip, nada! Long story short, one of the wind generator wires had backed out slightly from its connector, fixed it, red LED on, wind generator working. One problem solved, the next was that with only a single panel connected to the MPPT charger the max voltage out of a panel is 36 volts and the amount of current is proportional to the intensity of the solar radiation, which in the winter is about ½ to ¼ of the summer radiation when the sun is higher in the sky. Again, long story shortened, I disconnected the solar panel from the starting bank charger and connected it in series to the house bank charger, now the voltage at the charger is 60 – 72 volts, doubling the available power and effectively doubling the charge current. BIG difference, huge difference, the MPPT charger is now more efficient, I’m seeing 10 to 20 charge amps, where with a single panel attached, I was getting at getting 4 – 5 amps. If your worries about how the starting banks will stay charged, every time the engine runs the alternator charges those batteries, (like your car or truck) and the only other load on the starting bank is the bilge pump which hardly runs at all.
Got up after a restful night’s sleep, checked the batteries… I guess I should explain that I have a computer connection of each of the MPPT chargers and I can see what the chargers have been doing, battery voltages, solar panel voltages, change currents, make adjustments, do charts and graphs.. again, ya I know, who else does this kind of stuff. Fixed a few other things on the boat, we went to the laundromat and did two loads of laundry, drank a beer at Lorraine’s waiting for the laundry to finish, met some other cruisers at Lorraine’s. They told us that at Scorpio’s across the street it is Cruiser’s Happy Hour, (2 for 1). Ya, I’m in. The laundromat was relatively new, very clean. The lady that runs the place has a store, rental showers, and does haircuts on the back porch. Every time I’d walk in the back door where the barber chair is set up, she would say to me ‘I have to get you in my chair’, I’d say, ‘what are you trying to say, I look shabby?’, she just smiled. Truth be told, I looked real shabby. At 4:30 we left Aine for Scorpio’s, we pulled into the dinghy dock at the same time as the couple we met from Texas at Lorraine’s earlier. As Sarah was climbing out of the dinghy and up the ladder, she hooked her watch on the ladder, it pulled apart and fell into the water. She was pissed. As the couple was docking Sarah helped them with their lines and told them the story about the watch. The wife, a very nice lady, said ‘my husband will drive in and get it for you!’ He starts taking off everything but his skivvies, climbs down the ladder and jumps in, dove to one spot and brings up some trash, looks around and see something else, which turned out to be the watch, (still working), Sarah says ‘thank you, drinks are on me’. He redresses and off we went. 
The other funny thing about this is that at Lorraine’s earlier we also met a single French-Canadian guy who was going the Happy Hour too. While the husband was stripping off his clothes, the Canadian guy was approaching the dock, immediate turned away and went to another dock. When we all got together at Scorpio’s the Canadian guy said I wasn’t sure what was going on there, I saw your husband (the first names escape me) stripping and I know I’d didn’t want to see anymore, it was a good laugh. After the watch was received, the wife took a picture of a mostly naked husband and Sarah. At Scorpio’s the Cruiser’s played a few games of bingo for prizes, our table didn’t participate, we talked, we had some drinks, ate dinner, and went back to the boat in complete darkness. I’m told that the Island Rum Punch was potent. I only had 2 beers and let the youngsters talk, they were all in the 30s and 40s. It was fun. The best part of cruising is meeting other people, locals and travelers.
Breakfast – [MJS] Cheddar Cheesy scrambled eggs, Penne with 5 Cheese sauce (reheated left overs), Tea, [Sarah]Cheddar Cheesy scrambled eggs, Lunch – [MJS & Sarah] None, Dinner – [MJS] cheese burger, French fries, 2 – Sands Beer [Sarah] Chicken Cascadia, 3 – Island Rum Punch