Follow Up On Intermittent AC Outage

[Cindy Lawrence]

Last summer I posted a question about the intermittent loss of AC shore power on my 1986 Tolly 44 CPMY. Forum members rightfully expressed serious concern and offered suggestions. AC shore power would be lost for about 20 minutes then come back on, indicating the likely cause being heat related. After much probing and testing (and expense) my regular and trusted service and repair advisor, Paul, at Pacific Coast Yachting Services (a Tolly sponsor on Lake Union) found out the the original Smart Plug male socket on my boat has a built in heat activated "circuit breaker" which automatically trips and resets when power draw get high. I had previously checked the socket and all connections were good with no signs of high heat, plus the on board circuit breakers never tripped, so I had ruled this out. Evidently there was a good amount of conservatism in the socket's tripping. In hindsight it often occurred when we had just arrived on the boat and the hot water heater was coming back up to temperature and another circuit was turned on. Anyway, I confirmed the situation with Smart Plug and they acknowledged the problem and said they had corrected the problem and changed the socket and gave me a free replacement. Much thanks to Paul and Smart Plug, and all concerned club members. And now you know the rest of the story.