Galapagos,  San Cristobal

Too much sun

The ironic fate of our 20-amp fuse when asked to carry 26 amps of charging current from the solar array for quite a few days. The smell of burning and the obvious warping of the plastic fuse box kind of suggested something might be wrong. Aren’t these things designed to stop this kind of stuff from happening?! It never blew, it just melted! All of that metal should be covered by the yellow plastic. Notice also the scorching and splitting of the insulation on the orange wiring. It has now been replaced with a 40-amp breaker of the type found in household junction boxes, which cost $7 because it doesn’t have ‘marine’ printed on it and seems to be doing the job much better.

The ironic fate of our 20-amp fuse when asked to carry 26 amps of charging current from the solar array for quite a few days. The smell of burning and the obvious warping of the plastic fuse box kind of suggested something might be wrong. Aren't these things designed to stop this kind of stuff from happening?! It never blew. It just melted!

2 Comments

  • Vicky Hamshere

    You will certainly be a resourceful mechanical, electrical, plumbing, electronic marine expert, amongst your many other expertise, before long, if you aren’t already!!

    If there are ever “dull” moments on board, you must both enjoy them!!

    We enjoy reading about it all 🙂 Still loving the posts…..

  • Jeff Thaw

    Alex, when you spoke of problems with the soft water tanks, factory tanks? mine are the plastic ones under each setee..is that what you had problems with?
    in your pics of Bob it looks like you have roller furling headsail?….yes?
    where are you sailing to next?

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