Well, last night's exercise was bit of an unusual one. Presently our own boat is in Poole at Headquarters having some work done to resolve an ongoing issue with coolant for the engines. So last night we put to sea in 'Fishermen's Friend', 12-33 one of the relief lifeboats. Within minutes it became apparent that we had a problem. Dave entered the engine room to check that all was well and returned commenting that there was a burning smell coming from the port engines starter motor.
The problem was that the starter motor on the port engine had jammed in (engaged) so was spinning with the engine. That basically turned it into an un-regulated generator which we think is what then caused the radar and laserplot to shut down. It also damaged the MF receiver, the Gyro compass for the radar and the power supply for the autohelm units, so, by the time we turned for home we had no electronics and no certainty that the port engine would still be running when we got back to station.
Luckily Martin re-housed quickly and safely and before we knew it most of us were heading for a pint leaving Dave to sort the damage!
So this morning Dave reported that all was well again: 'A new starter motor has been fitted, the batteries tested and all the electronics checked/repaired as required'. Well done mate...
(Sorry for the lack of photos...I've run out of storage space on my google account so it will take 24 hours to sort this out)
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2 comments:
Must be something to do with the water down the south coast. We've had Fisherman's Friend here on station in Ramsey a number of times and never had any problems. Glad to hear that it's all sorted.
So now we know who to blame!
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