Electrical revamp for Pippin

Sailing to the Azores recently highlighted some electrical weaknesses on my yacht Pippin that had me desperately changing batteries around at sea – never a good idea.

I was eight days out, 180 miles west of Vigo, Spain, and wanted to tackle the battery issue before the forecast bad weather struck.

It seemed only one of two domestic 105Ah lead acid leisure batteries was working. The engine bank consisted of a 105Ah battery, wired separately, and up front lurked a fourth battery for the winch and bow thruster, which I decided to commandeer for the leisure bank.

Naturally, the squall hit just as I was carrying the 23kg battery back along the