When one thinks of the worst thing that could happen on your boat, many would say falling overboard underway, encountering a hurricane or hitting something and sinking. Although a concern, it is pretty common for sailors to fear fire more than anything. A fiber glass boat is pretty much a big floating petroleum product and if fire catches that product, it is very difficult to put the fire out and will often burn a boat down to the water line very quickly. Also, if that boat is in a marina when the fire takes place it will cascade into burning other boats.
That brings us to an event that occurred earlier this year. Tuesday evening of February 21, Sondra received a call from our boat neighbor Tiffany at 9 pm (Tiffany in St. Pete and us in Tallahassee). Tiffany called because she could hear an alarm going off on our boat and that the smell of something electrical burning was coming from the boat. Sondra found me and placed the phone on speaker to bring me into the conversation. Tiffany offered to go below but needed the lock combination to gain entry. Once she unlocked the boat Tiffany had verbalized what she was seeing for us. First, she had difficulty opening the hatch slide because it was covered with our enclosure curtains that were placed on the slide. Several key points here- we had someone working on our enclosure so the whole bimini and curtains were down. Perhaps this helped Tiffany notice the odor. Also, the difficulty opening the hatch slide introduced a bit of safety with a slow opening by not quickly introducing fresh air to the cabin. When she opened it, she told us that there was a lot of smoke inside. She went on in but could not see any fire, just smoke. She noted that the dehumidifier was not operating (which normally is on). While on the call I discussed what breakers to turn off, along with the battery selector switch at the nav station. Tiffany even offered to look into the lazarette.
No sign of a fire was observed regardless of the smoke. She disconnected the power from the dock, pedestal and she also disconnected the shore power from the pedestal. In hindsight this should have been the first thing we directed her to do but it took a few minutes to get to that point. All during this conversation Sondra and I were grabbing keys, getting dressed and hopping into the car to begin a long, stressful drive to St. Pete by 9:30 pm.
During our panic drive to St. Pete, we called Tiffany back to check in on her and the boat. It turns out that she had walked the docks trying to find some help and happened to find the Captain of the yacht Sorcha that was in our marina. Captain Red came over and performed an investigation of Utopia. He opened up several cabin cabinets and hatches looking for the source but did not find any open flame on the boat. Even though the shore power was disconnected he asked about another power shut off on the boat, I directed him to a second battery shut off switch in the lazarette. He also closed off the valves at our propane cylinders that were above the lazarette.
Captain Red suspected that the source of smoke was from the lazarette. The smoke started to dissipate after Captain Red checked the boat, but he suggested that Tiffany check the status of our boat every 30 minutes until we arrived. Tiffany had plans to house sit for a friend that evening but made arrangements to change her plans for the evening and to stay at her boat.
When we arrived at the marina parking lot at 2 am, I was relieved to not see any fire engines around. You could smell the burnt electronics before reaching Utopia. After getting an update from Tiffany at the dock, we felt safe enough to sleep in the very smelly boat.
We began our search for the source before sunrise. Eventually we suspected that the inverter was the source since there was a little bit of charring visible on the front of the unit and some rope located beneath the inverter looked lightly charred. What really alarmed us was that the inverter is located directly beneath the propane locker. Not feeling too secure in the state of the boat I made some phone calls and scheduled an electrician to come out and do a safety check for us later in the afternoon. I took the time to check the batteries and they were all fully charged and functioning well. Although the 12-volt system was fine, the inverter was apparently dead.
Further investigation showed signs of scorching and melted plastic with what appears to have been flames coming out of the inverter fan vent. We were quite lucky that the fire was pretty much contained withing the metal housing of the inverter. If it had gone on further, it could have quickly gotten out of control, especially since the propane locker is directly above the inverter.
Unfortunately, I needed to be at work Thursday morning, and I had hit the road back to Tallahassee around 1 pm on Wednesday, leaving Sondra at the boat, making my stay in St. Pete less than 12 hours.
Late Wednesday afternoon an electrician came to investigate the electrical system on Utopia. He verified that 12 v system was safe for use. The electrician removed the inverter charger then opened up the unit to discover the inside was very charred. He explained that the horrible odor is from the burnt capacitors and mentioned that we were very fortunate the fire did not get larger. He said this occurrence was “one for the books” but we never could 100% figure why it happened. After some more electrical testing of the system, he wired the boat to receive shore power without the inverter charger in line. Sondra asked him to leave the inverter sitting in cockpit so I can examine it before tossing it. She had to place trash bags over it to help control the odors, which after a while began to smell like an old ashtray.
We had the electrician order then install a new inverter charger in addition to some other monitoring items so we can look at the state of our electrical system from afar.
So how could we have avoided this and what are the things we did correctly:
We had always planned on replacing the old 12-year-old inverter this spring during a scheduled electrical overhaul. The inverter was making some loud and new noises in the months running up to the event. In hindsight this should have caused more alarm bells. I wasn’t too concerned with the noise thinking we would be replacing it soon. I won’t disregard odd sounds in the future.
We have several smoke detectors on the boat which probably saved it from burning up. The scary thing about that was we were somewhat lax with the alarms and did not have all the batteries installed until December 2022. It really could have been a disaster if those alarms did not go off to alert Tiffany.
Getting to know your neighbors is a good idea. Without Tiffany having our contact number, things might have turned out for the worse.
One thing we should have had was the contact number for the night security guard. Tiffany was lucky to have found someone so knowledgeable in Captain Red, but we all felt at a loss as to whom to contact in an emergency that evening.
Not knowing exactly how it happened has been a bit of a worry. Having said this, we have added a bunch of extra safety measures on the boat with all the Lithium upgrades and monitoring items, so we feel much better about the status of our electrical system on Utopia.
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