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What's That Smell?

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Dave Bristle
Master Marine Consultant

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Djibouti
10005 Posts

Initially Posted - 10/10/2004 : 00:14:55

...sorta like burning plastic... 4-5 miles (?) offshore from San Diego... smoke seeping out of the galley... open a galley drawer--now acrid smoke billowing out of the galley! Open the sail locker--smoke billowing out of the sail locker! Shut down motor (we were motor-sailing home), turn of main switch on panel, turn off battery selector, identify burning wires inside locker, see that no flames are visible (with fire extinguisher ready), wait for smoke to dissipate, positively identify source and, now, lack of fire... Start engine, motor back to Mission Bay and into slip...

Thanks, Jim Baumgart, for an exciting day!

And thanks, Gary and Suzie Norgan, for standing by and following us in--it's good to know there's somebody who can pick you up out of the water! (Gary, when you're not in a Japanese restaurant, it'll be OK to eat the "guacamole"--you just have to get back on that horse.

)

Whew! Sailing is sure exciting in San Diego!

Association Port Captain, Mystic, CT
Past member and DPO of C-25 #5032
Now on Eastern 27 Sarge (but still sailing) and posting as "Stinkpotter".

Passage, Mystic, and Sarge--click to enlarge.

Edited by - Dave Bristle on 10/10/2004 11:52:40

JimB517
Past Commodore

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USA
3285 Posts

Response Posted - 10/10/2004 : 10:46:55

It was very scary to have a fire on board 5 miles offshore and 10 miles from home. It was very lucky for me that it happened the day I had Dave along plus Gary and Susan nearby.

A PO installed wire is tapped into the main panel, its two very light grade wires inside a cable. This runs my radio, vhf, and nav center (autopilot, fishfinder). Two weekends ago we blew a fuse on this circuit. I replaced the fuse with one from my spreader lights on the panel (don't have spreader lights). I also found and repaired a bad looking connection inside the combing at my nav center. No problem last weekend and sailed every day after work, no problems.

Behind the Catalina switch panel, this wire was properly supported by stick-on wire clamps that have zip ties on a plastic, stick on backing. The wire runs from the back of the panel, over the forward bulkhead of the lazerette/fuel locker (on a 78 model its all one) through the bilge and up through conduit on the starboard side of the boat just at the quarterberth/salon. There it splits and a wire goes to the VHF and stereo, plus another runs back to the nav center.

Over the years, it seems the cable cracked at the zip tie support on the back of the bulkhead in the lazerette. The zip tie gradually sawed through the cable. Combined with the heavy load of having the radio, autopilot, and fish finder all on (VHF was off because I use a handheld) this overloaded the wires and about 6 inches of insulation burned.

With Dave's help, I found the source of the fire in about 30 seconds from seeing the smoke. Once main power was off at the panel and the battery switch was off there was no remaining danger, although the mess continued to smoke for quite a while and the salon still smells very smokey.

I'll fix it all today, but yesterday I was glad to have a motor, GPS and VHF all independant of boat main battery power plus friends close by!

Its the worst danger at sea I've faced since the time on our year-long voyage when all three bilge pump alarms came on, and Spike opened a engine room hatch to find a foot of water in the bilge of Indiscipline 2.

Edited by - on

ClamBeach
Master Marine Consultant

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3072 Posts

Response Posted - 10/10/2004 : 10:55:57

Lucky folks... I think the statistics show that nearly 90% of boat fires are started by faulty wiring... and once fiberglass gets going, it makes a tremendous bonfire.

Jim, what went wrong ???

Edited by - on

SoCalGary
Deckhand

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USA
6 Posts

Response Posted - 10/10/2004 : 11:52:22

<blockquote id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Jim, what went wrong ??? - ClamBeach<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">
Good morning to all.

Not to answer for Jim, but I think that Jim calls out what may have been the problem in paragraph 4 in his post. Hopefully we will get more news once the repairs are done

<blockquote id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">...Over the years, it seems the cable cracked at the zip tie support on the back of the bulkhead in the lazerette. The zip tie gradually sawed through the cable. Combined with the heavy load of having the radio, autopilot, and fish finder all on (VHF was off because I use a handheld) this overloaded the wires and about 6 inches of insulation burned...<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">

After a recent invite, I hope to get out on the water with Jim soon.

I am just glad that he got the excitement (at least this type of excitement) over before we get out there.

Jim, I hope all is well with the repairs. I would offer to help, but electronics are not my forte'.

See you soon,

SoCalGary

Edited by - on

ClamBeach
Master Marine Consultant

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3072 Posts

Response Posted - 10/10/2004 : 13:03:06

Clambeach says... our posts crossed... Jim added his post whilst I was reading/contemplating the first post in the thread.

Jim wrote... "...this overloaded the wires ... and about 6 inches of insulation burned..."

Jim, based on your description, I think your circuit load probably didn't have much to do with this particular fire. The heat generated at the site of the short probably would have set the insulation on fire even if the load was shut off.

Point shorts like this are a rather 'nasty' mode of failure that's hard to protect against as fusing is usually sized to protect the entire run of wire... and the point short may produce significant heat before that load is reached.

Hmmm... Time for me to inspect my wiring.

Edited by - on

Dave Bristle
Master Marine Consultant

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Djibouti
10005 Posts

Response Posted - 10/10/2004 : 16:50:28

<blockquote id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Originally posted by ClamBeach
 Hmmm... Time for me to inspect my wiring.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">
My thought, exactly... But I have a question: What do you check for? What would have tipped anybody, even an expert, that this short was about to happen? From what I saw yesterday, it was due to wear inside a wire-tie that was stuck to the bulkhead to support the wires. If the wires should be supported there, would it be better to do it with two separate ties, so that worn insulation won't allow contact between the wires? The blown fuse Jim mentioned could have been a clue, but what would he look for or test?

And then what about the runs you can't see? For example, it seems that my mast wiring involves runs between the headliner and the cabintop. Twenty years of vibration and other motion could be causing chafe on the inusalation just about anywhere.

Would it be wise to downsize our fuses to the minimum that will support the load on a circuit? I will certainly take more seriously any blown fuse from now on.

All I know is, as Jim said, smoke coming out of a boat, several hours from anywhere in 300' of water, does not give you a warm feeling. By comparison (from experience), having a mast come down is just a nuisance, considering the potential for disaster. I commend Jim for keeping his cool, shutting things down, figuring it out, and in the end getting us home safely.

Edited by - on

Waterboy
Navigator

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USA
204 Posts

Response Posted - 10/10/2004 : 18:19:33

Could old 'faulty' wiring be checked by measuring its resistance with an ohmeter?

Edited by - on

Oscar
Master Marine Consultant

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USA
2030 Posts

Response Posted - 10/10/2004 : 22:26:40

Dave!!! Get back here....

(Glad everything worked out OK......these are the kinds of events that'll give you the ebeejeebies for years.)

Oscar
C42 # 76 "Lady Kay"
Ex skipper/owner of C250 WB #618

Edited by - Oscar on 10/10/2004 22:31:12

ClamBeach
Master Marine Consultant

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3072 Posts

Response Posted - 10/10/2004 : 23:08:27

All following are IMHO. My electrial training and experience is mostly in industrial process control, power distribution and computer systems.

Dave asked "What would have tipped anybody... that this short was about to happen?"

That's the tough part. I watched a documentary on the investigation into the cause of a disasterous mid-air fire (simply amazing detective work) that came down to a similar twist of fate... a single point of failed insulation on a wire that wasn't routed quite right. And this happened on a thoroughly engineered and rigorously maintained aircraft.

Fortunately, our boats aren't that complicated. I think we can see most of our wiring and probably should inspect it periodically... looking, wiggling, measuring resistance etc. The in-cabin-roof stuff is real scary and I'm replacing mine during a haul-out to accomodate marina dredging later this winter.

IMHO the best defense is to be sure and follow good wiring practices and circuit design during any installation/modification of systems. Beyond that, conducting a periodic wiring inspection (yearly?) is a great idea. On Jims' boat it sounds like the original installer put in a stress point.. maybe cinched the tie-wrap too tight. (without looking, I'm guessing)

Dave asked... "If the wires should be supported there, would it be better to do it with two separate ties..."

I think the best approach is to use 'flexible wireway' to run the wires in... then secure the wireway rather than the wires. This avoids placing strain on the wires and provides a barrier between them and a hostile environment. Also, there are other styles of those "sticki-backs" that don't use tie-wraps to hold wire, but have more loosly-fitting snap-open clips.

Waterboy asked.. "Could old 'faulty' wiring be checked by measuring its resistance with an ohmeter?" Well, I think yes and no. You usually look for high resistance in old marine wiring... which indicates corroding, breaking-down copper wire and/or bad connections... which are not good in their own right.

Checking with a meter might not have have done any good in this case unless you happened to get lucky. Jim's problem was likely an intermittent short... everything would look just fine until the boat got moving around out on the ocean and the conductors came together.

What's real scary is that this could have happened while on the hook somewhere... with everyone asleep.

That's a real good argument for installing smoke detectors on our boats. I'm going to put one in the main cabin and one in the portside dumpster.

Edited by - ClamBeach on 10/10/2004 23:10:29

Dave Bristle
Master Marine Consultant

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Djibouti
10005 Posts

Response Posted - 10/11/2004 : 00:43:42

Two other thoughts/observations from this incident:

1. On Jim's boat (I won't go into the Mark stuff), that burning wire was in the same locker as the fuel tank, which vents into the locker. (The locker itself has a cowel vent to the outside.) We're still here, but that design didn't make us feel any better.

2. We had several key systems that were independent of the boat's electrical system: the handheld VHF, the GPS, and the Honda with its pull-starter. The first of those was the most important.

Some things to think about...

Edited by - on

sweetcraft
Admiral

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USA
816 Posts

Response Posted - 10/11/2004 : 01:33:28

Sure glad that everything turned out ok but now I also will go back in the locker of #1490 and inspect my system. Thanks for sharing the story so we can benefit and check our boats. I am about to install the new Honda and connect up the remote controls for it. I will also make an entire check of the rest of the electrical system. I have rewired the boat or changed system several times by moving batteries together to shorten runs and put breakers on each btry at the batterie's positive terminal. They are breakers that require reseting. I kept the positive and negative wires separate as much as practical and fused each circuit with a frame and plexiglass cover over the entire back of the panels with a minimum number of screws to remove. I am now going to reinspect the entire system with reading this account. Thanks for the sharing. Jim S, Snowbird

Edited by - on

JimB517
Past Commodore

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USA
3285 Posts

Response Posted - 10/11/2004 : 01:38:45

Well, it was a very long day, but I'm done and the boat is repaired. It did not smell like smoke this morning, that was good.

The damage was a lot worse than I thought. About 6 feet of wire totally burned and melted.

You know how the switch/fuse panel has a copper bar tieing together all the positive leads going to the switches? A wire was soldered onto this bar. (FYI the switches switch the circuit on the negative side - just like in a car). A negative lug was attached to the common negative bus bar that is mounted on the port bulkhead in the lazerette just below the switch panel. This wire then ran through a hole drilled in the bulkhead, into the bilge, under the ladder (thats where my dual gel cell batteries are). The wire was a marine rated two conductor cable, with 14 gage insulated wires inside the cable. It was very old.

This was supported about every 6 inches with a stick on that used a small gage wire tie to hold the cable. Even in the bilge. Thats good, wires are supposed to be supported.

Running in front of my batteries, this wire was cable tied to the fresh water hose. The fire stopped at the first wire tie on the water hose. Everything below the common negative busbar burned and melted up to the point where the cable was supported by the water line.

Following the water hose, the cable then ran into the storage below the starboard setee. It was then routed through a PVC pipe up the side of the boat to the quarterberth overhead. This is where the CD player, and VHF are mounted. Both have a fuse. Behind the radio, many wires are crimped together resulting in power going to a 12 VDC plug, and running back through the overhead to a deck plug at the rear of the boat. At the very end is a fuse for the autopilot. The only thing I added to this mess was tieing in the fishfinder to te autopilot deck plug. That last fuse is what blew 2 weeks ago. I replaced it with what I had (turned out to be a 15 amp - way too much) and I fixed what looked like a short at the deck plug. During the event, every single piece of equipment was on except the fixed VHF. Also, the fire started just after I started the motor. The motor does vibrate the boat quite a bit down in the quarterberth/lazerette area.

Everything from where the cable was tied to the water line was OK, but I tore it all out.

Now I ran a heavy gage marine rated cable from the spreader lights switch on the panel (behind a 10 amp fuse) and the common negative busbar to a new busbar I installed in the starboard setee locker. Marine VHF, and CD player share a connection to this busbar. The 12 VDC socket has its own cable and the autopilot/fish finder have their own cable. Everything is soldered and double heat shrink wrapped. The new bus bar is screwed to the bulkhead in the storage locker that seperates the water tank from the rest of the locker, and is covered with a little plastic box. Wires are taped and supported.

Now, the switch on the panel "spreader lights" turns on or off this entire circuit, plus it is fuse protected at the panel. Every piece of gear has its own fuse as well.

I don't have spreader lights so this works fine. I also cleaned up my battery charger connections. Now I can turn the master battery switch off and still charge. I've decided to leave the master battery switch off when I'm not on board and to turn off the dock power once the batteries are charged. It is an old boat. I traced every inch of wiring and nothing else looks bad.

LESSON

Don't wire things directly to the battery. We smelled smoke and I asked Dave to turn "off" my master battery switch and there was no more fire. We motored in. I fixed it the next day.

Try to do that with lots of stuff directly wired to the battery?

Edited by - JimB517 on 10/11/2004 01:47:19

Sea Trac
Master Marine Consultant

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Vanuatu
1357 Posts

Response Posted - 10/11/2004 : 11:47:35

Wow! Scary! I'm certainly glad that you guys are alright!

Edited by - on

Doug C.
Navigator

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USA
146 Posts

Response Posted - 10/11/2004 : 12:40:23

Sounds like you had too much fun! Glad there was no major damage.

Had a short on Valkyrie when I was pulling the undersink cabinet out. Found out the battery gauge was wired direct with no fuse. Drawer pinched wires, wires shorted, couldn't get the batteries disconected fast enough.

I've found that I'm not that thrilled with the factory wiring or the wiring that was apparently done by the shop during comissioning. Slowly but surely upgrading all of it.
It's not surprising that this is a significant cause of boat fires.

Edited by - on

JimB517
Past Commodore

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USA
3285 Posts

Response Posted - 10/11/2004 : 12:42:42

In retrospect it was a minor emergency that could have been worse. We responded well to the situation. I should have given the order for all hands to don life jackets. It was quite a shock. I think a fire at sea is even more scary than a leak (I've gotten to expereince each!)

Edited by - on

Oscar
Master Marine Consultant

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USA
2030 Posts

Response Posted - 10/11/2004 : 16:37:47

<blockquote id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">That's a real good argument for installing smoke detectors on our boats. <hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">

I did. As I have an "Engine Room" now I put one in there, and one in the salon, up high near the roof, where the smoke will hang right away. I also put a CO detector in the engine room.....going to Florida we might experience hours (days?) of motoring, with the off watch crew sleeping in the cabins next to the engine room.

Oscar
C42 # 76 "Lady Kay" (Formerly C250 WB #618)

Edited by - Oscar on 10/11/2004 16:45:26

Dave Bristle
Master Marine Consultant

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Djibouti
10005 Posts

Response Posted - 10/12/2004 : 00:46:30

Looking back I come away from this experience with a heightened appreciation for the importance of getting the wiring right on a boat. A fire onboard, five miles out, will do that for you! A few simple points seem to have come out of this:

- EVERYTHING should be fused with the lowest apm fuse that will support the load on that particular circuit.

- Wires should be substantial and tinned marine-quality. (Buy it at WM, not Home Dopey.) A heavier gauge not only carries current more efficiently, it has heavier insulation that will withstand more wear and last longer. IMHO, there's no point in having wires thinner than 12 gauge anywhere in the boat, partly so the insulation is substantial. On boats, wiring is subject to constant movement, vibration, and a corrosive environment. Tinning reduces the likelihood that corrosion will cause cracks in the copper conductor, which in turn can cause high resistence that can generate enough heat to start a fire--even with no short-circuit. That does not appear to have been Jim's problem, but it can be a problem.

- As in a house, if you do wiring in your boat, unless you consider yourself to be an expert (as Jim apparently is and I'm not), I believe you should at least have it inspected by a pro--it could be a surveyor rather than a marine electician who might want to convince you that you should have used him to do the work... But 12-volt DC wiring is just as capable of immolating your boat as 110-volt AC wiring is of immolating your house. You may have read Don Casey's books, but you may have missed or forgotten a critical sentence in one of them. Add a professional set of eyes to the process.

In summary, this part of "messing about with boats" is not the same as the cosmetic or even mechanical aspects. It can destroy everything in a heartbeat and put lives in danger. (Plastic boats go quickly when they get going.)

Safe voyages...

Edited by - on

JimB517
Past Commodore

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USA
3285 Posts

Response Posted - 10/12/2004 : 11:20:29

the experience made me realize that I don't have insurance (liability only) after all this work, I'd hate to lose Indiscipline III

Edited by - on

Frank Hopper
Past Commodore

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Pitcairn Island
6776 Posts

Response Posted - 10/12/2004 : 11:34:35

<blockquote id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Originally posted by JimB517
 the experience made me realize that I don't have insurance (liability only) <hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">

That seems odd.

Edited by - on

JimB517
Past Commodore

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USA
3285 Posts

Response Posted - 10/12/2004 : 14:47:03

Frank, odd that I thought about insurance when, very briefly, I contemplated abandoning ship at sea? Or odd that I have liability coverage only?

Assuming you mean the latter, yes, I have liability only. Like you, I am short of funds. Coverage with BOATUS for liability is $104/year. I think going to an agreed value policy with $6000 of coverage is abut $250/year. I may do that, hopefully without another survey.

However, the chance that I'd total this boat or do damage that I couldn't fix for less than the deductible is very small.

No question about it, I am a member of Vessel Assist providing free on the water towing and service to 50 miles out. Now that is insurance worth having for $80/year.

Edited by - on

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