Yachting and Boating World forums: A smell of acrid PVC and the electrics die. Would you cope?

You've had an uneventful passage across from Salcombe. You left at dawn, and are now making an approach to Guernsey, for an approach to Beaucette, north-over the island. It's your first passage to the Channel Islands and you are feeling good about having a plotter with electronic charts - far more charts than you'd normally have spent out on and no uncertainties of position. As you near the north end of the island, with the currents starting to run strong, you decide to take the sails down and motor; there isn't much wind left and it will leave you free to concentrate on pilotage.

After you start the engine you notice that instrument bulbs seem much brighter than ususal. You make a note to check it out when you get into harbour and go back into the cockpit. Just as you are arriving at your waypoint to alter course down the Little Russel the plotter screen goes blank and the engine note changes. The autopilot goes off line and you have not remembered to make a note of the last heading the autopilot was steering to maintain track. You glance at the magnetic compass and ask your crew to maintain that course.

You go down below and are immediately struck by an acrid smell of hot PVC wiring. You get a deep, hollow feeling in your stomach. This can't be happening? All of the electrical circuits are dead. Nothing electrical is working and the voltmeter is reading zero. You check the fusebox and all of the fuses and breakers are fine. You check the batteries; the smell of acrid, hot, PVC is much stronger down there but there is nothing remarkable to see - it all looks in order. You have a look in the engine compartment and apart from the smell, all seems normal.

Your crew calls to ask what you want her to do. The present heading is taking her towards a lighthouse and some rocks, and by eye alone she is crabbing by nearly twenty degrees as the current starts to take you down the Little Russel. The problem is how is the channel marked? You'd had it all laid out on the plotter - painstakingly laid out with waypoints and the alternatives of Beaucette and St Peter Port. You don't have a pilot on board - this was one of the cost-savings that allowed you to justify the price of the plotter and electronic charts. In fact, the only charts you have on board are in your plotter.

Your autopilot is dead, as is your VHF radio. Your crew is not experienced at steering a good course by hand and in any case you have no charts on which to lay off a course.

What do you do now?

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