Anyway, when I climbed on deck I was surprised to see a large power boat swinging on her anchor only about 50' off my port side. I quickly looked around to make sure I wasn't dragging my anchor, and satisfied I was in exactly the same place I'd anchored over two weeks ago, tried to wake up the occupants of the other boat.
I shined my spotlight into the potholes, yelled, and banged on pots for several minutes, but no one stirred. Then I broke out my fenders and dock lines so I could tie up to her if a collision couldn't be avoided. I continued to try to signal from time to time, but got no response.
All this time, she slowly kept getting closer. Both of us had deployed our anchors from the bow, and there was about 10 knots of wind, but due to current or some other factor, she was still getting closer as she drifted with the wind. I had out about 75' of chain, so I went forward and pulled in what I hoped was enough to let her slip past my stern, about 20'. I would have taken in more, but I didn't want to drag mine either.
Then I grabbed a 10' pole and stood on the port quarter ready to push her off to avoid contact. As she swung within a few feet, I was able to tap on the hull with my pole, and within a few minutes, someone came on deck.
I told him he was dragging his anchor, then asked how much rode he'd put out, but he didn't seem to know. All he could say was that he'd anchored in 6' and put out several times that much, and that "the angle looked good," which is meaningless. I mentioned the the tide was 8', i.e., you need to add 8' to whatever depth you read at low tide, and that I had out 75', a 5:1 ratio.
That didn't seem to make too much of an impact because his only answer was that he'd figure it out. They finally moved and re-anchored more or less where they started, about a quarter mile away, but I still kept an eye on them. We hadn't reached low tide yet, and since the next high tide wasn't for another 8 or 9 hours, I figured it was safe to go back to bed.
That was around 0400, but it still took a while to get back to sleep. It should be a nice day today, so I may try to catch back up later.
Power watch:
I'm planning to replace my batteries, but wanted to make sure everything was working correctly first -- don't want to ruin the new ones too. So, after letting the solar panel charge up my one "good" battery yesterday, actually the less bad one, I started the engine and tried to adjust the voltage regulator.
I'd noticed a few days prior that she was putting out 16.5 volts, which is way too high and probably what burned up the batteries in the first place. The manual describes how to adjust this, but the screw head on the pot was damaged. I was finally able to get it to turn, but even so, the voltage still ended up climbing to 16.5 volts, however it did move around a bit.
It's a Balmar, so I gave them a call and they confirmed that was most likely what caused my batteries to fail and recommended I replace it there new model which is much more advanced. I'd sorta already decided to do that anyway, but with everything else going on, hadn't had a chance to get to it yet.
They told me the pot is probably corroded and if I turn it back and forth enough, it might clean itself up enough to be usable in the short term. I'm going to experiment with it today and see if that will work. It'll take several days to order and get in a new regulator, but right now, my batteries won't even last the night with my low power LED anchor light.
I may have to start using my kerosene anchor light until I get new batteries, but if I can get the regulator to work, I'll go ahead and install them right away. They weigh about 65 pounds a piece, so I'd prefer to take the boat in instead of the dinghy. But that means I'd have to run the engine to motor off the dock and back to the anchorage, so I need to fix the over charging problem first.
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