We left early and headed toward the Dry Tortugas. There was a lot of wind and the seas were building. We had also seen some lightning toward the south so we decided to put in at Marco Island Marina. After a few hours at sea I noticed and odd smell in the cabin. At first I thought it was the engine until I felt the settee above the batteries. It was super-hot! I got Mike (who was “captaining” the boat) and we opened up the battery compartment. The start battery was leaking battery acid and starting to look a bit bulged.
We tried shutting off the battery via the main switch as we had been shown during our briefing. The switch no longer worked and the battery was displaying over 16 volts of charge (around 14.5 would be a full charge). Mike disonnected the battery by taking of the red, positive cable. Thankfully it cooled off after that. Now, every time we wanted to start the engine we had to connect the wire manually and then remove it. That would not work if we had to suddenly start the engine so we called Yachting Vacations and asked them to come to Marco Island and fix the problem. We arrived at the Marco Island Marina around 4:00pm, showered and used the time at the marina to go out to dinner.
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