Now that's embarrassing!

It's the first big distance race of the season. Getting a full crew has been difficult. However, we muster 8 people and are ready to go.

We get a decent start to things, but quickly conditions change from a light air mode to a heavy air beat. As we work to adjust to the new conditions, a call comes up from the cabin...

"Skipper, the PC is not charging and the house bank is reading only 10.2 Volts"!!! It's about 2 hours into the race. We have drawn about 6 Ah from the 105 Ah battery. This can't be happening..... and yet it is!

We sail on hoping that we can maintain at least the 10.2 V, but when the sun sets and we are forced to turn on the navigation lights, all the instrumentation shuts down. Faced with the prospect of beating for 27 miles in the middle of the fleet with no navigation lights and no instruments, we retire.

The really embarrassing part is that we had 4 electrical engineers on-board. However, you can't fix a sealed battery.

Looking back on it, it's another lesson in how boat preparations need to be perfect, right down to the last coulomb in the battery. Any one thing can put the entire program at risk.