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Uncontrolled ground current can really do some strange things
In Response To: Sounds familiar. ()

to your boat. I'll tell you a little more about what happened back then. On Friday I had a diver dive and clean the bottom of the boat prior to me leaving for Catalina Island Friday night. He said, in our discussion about the condition of the bottom paint, that everything was fine. I left Dana Point Harbor for the 35 mile motor boat ride to Catalina around 8PM. The weather was rough and right on the nose. About the time we reached the bell off the point I noticed the amp meter spike a few times but everything seemed to be running OK so we just kept going. We reached the island about 0200 hours, took a mooring and went to sleep. I woke up the next morning and noticed the batteries were lower then I would have expected but figured they were old and going south. I charged them up using the generator while we were doing breakfast and getting ready to go into town. Later in the afternoon when we returned to the boat I again noticed the batteries low. I started the generator and decided to go swimming while I waited for them to charge up. I got my mask and fins on and jumped over the side and when the bubbles cleared I was looking at the underside of the boat right in the area of the head. There was a white granulated dust where the through hulls used to be. I said to my self, "what the hell is that" and rubbed my hand across one of them. Of course all the "dust" just went away and I was looking into the hole. All I could see was a fiberglass hole. No through hull at. I looked at the shaft and it was white and so was the prop. They were covered but still intact. I checked the other fittings and they were all corroded to one degree or the other. The 5200 used to seat the sea cock was all that was holding the valve to the hull. I jumped out of the water and started looking for my teak plugs and hammer. Once they were laid out I called the Coast Guard and asked if they could hear me and his reply was that "they didn't do radio checks on Ch.16." I said "this isn't a radio check. I just want to make sure you can hear me because I have a serious problem here". After explaining to him what I planned on doing he said to call him every half hour and "good luck". I cast off and headed for Newport Beach after calling the boat yard to have the rail ready. We hauled the boat after the Boat US surveyor showed up. I had already found the short in the RADAR and told him what I thought. He went up the mast and found the short in about 10 minutes. He said that if he had not found it nothing would have been covered under my insurance because everything would have been written off to electrolysis corrosion. 10 grand later we were back in the water. It cost me about 500 bucks for the new Radar cable and Radar mount. I wish I would have thought about the heat exchangers and shaft tube back then but it is what it is.

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