Since buying our 2006 Vista 378 a few months ago, still haven't had a completely trouble free week-end on it.
I've been travelling for work, and hadn't been down to the boat for four weeks. Did all my usual checking stuff in the engine room, oils, fluids, no-leaks etc...all looked OK. Closed hatches and started he up. A little sluggish on the start but got going OK.
Ran for about 4 minutes, then wife noticed smoke -
Wife: Hey
Me: What
Wife: I see smoke
Me: Nothing to worry about - probably cause we haven't used the engines for a while
Wife: No ! it's coming out of the electrical box
^&#%^$
Stopped engines, turned off all power, got our 5 y.o. kid into his life jacket and got our 3 x 1kg fire extinguishers out.
Switch panel was cool to the touch, but smoke still continued to come out. 2 minutes go by, smoke is getting worse. Lift the carpet, smoke now coming out of all the hatch joints in the floor. I'm on a swing mooring at a large marina, so I phone the marina and get them to bring out some extra fire extinguishers. Having had the marina offices and workshops completely burn down some 12 months ago, they are very quick to send two work boats & staff out. I put the wife and kid into the marina boat.
I very slowly open the day hatch. huge amounts of pungent smoke, but no heat or flames. At least the smoke isn't getting any worse now, but I still can't get into the engine room.
Now, probably about 5 minutes after opening the engine hatch, smoke has cleared enough to let me have a careful look inside. At the end of the port engine was a mangled mess of smoldering rubber - it used to be the serpentine belt !
Not sure what happened yet - but the last trip a cooling hose came off it's spigot, spraying salt water around. I'm wondering if this has caused the alternator to seize during the 4 weeks I was away - will have to wait for the engineers to look at it today.
Anyway, some lessons learned -
1/ The place you see smoke may be different to location of the problem (I thought it was a switch panel fire)
2/ A small issue can generate vast amounts of smoke - I was really surprised with the density of the smoke.
3/ I should have got the wife & kid into our inflatable right away (Mine takes ages to launch due to the height of the V378's platform above the water and the current snap-davit design which jams unless released before the inflatable is at rest)
4/ I'll need to teach the wife how to launch the inflatable when I get the davits re-worked - maybe a goose-neck will help lower the davits.
5/ We'll have to make sure that we can all escape thru the bow hatch in case there's ever any issue aft.
and something I need to find out - Does anyone know how the Fireboy fire system activated - mechanically or electrically ? Will it activate if there's a fire and power is turned off ?
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