What's that burning smell?

Saturday, June 3, 2017

What’s that burning smell?

This title suggested itself to me this morning when we smelled burning electrical insulation shortly after reentering the river from our overnight anchorage.  We immediately shut down the engine while I checked out the engine room.  I discovered a stronger smell there but nothing obvious came to my attention.  The generator had been off for several hours, and no heavy demands were being made of the inverter.  We restarted and returned to the anchorage and dropped the hook at short stay while we shut down again as I investigated further.  Still nothing obvious.  As I write this two hours earlier and after frequent engine room checks, the smell persists as I guess one would expect of something like charred insulation, but the boat is running fine, and all systems continue to operate.  My next plan is to get into Demopolis tonight, cool the engine room down, and thoroughly go over all batteries and cables looking for issues tomorrow.

 

In regard to electrical and specifically engine room fire suppression, there is none installed.  The three dry chemical extinguishers are fine for fires in the topside spaces, but opening an engine room hatch to fight a well-stared fire (there is no automated detection system) with a dry chemical extinguisher would be hazardous to the fire fighter and useless in the end while damaging all the wiring insulation down there from the corrosive effects of the dry chemical agent.