I Found the Electrical Short!

Buying a large boat, and learning all the systems, can be nerve-wracking. Especially if she is an older boat, and many of the "learning experiences" involve repairs or upgrades. Our trucking experience has taught Cindy and I to be vigilant about changes in how things work, a change means something may have broken. For instance, if black smoke suddenly starts billowing from under the hood, something may be amiss. That visual clue is a message that we need to check something out. The changes also include if a new sound pops up. Neither one of us could abide a new rattle while we were on our sleeper break. That noise had to be discovered and stopped! It might be simple, like a zipper tapping on a plastic closet door, or it could be serious, like a chain slipping of the chain-hanger about to go under a drive tire. The worst-case scenario is what keeps us up, I guess. We can even sleep with a sound going on, as long as we know what it is.

When we got to Florida in our 1989 Stevens 50, someone told us that we might hear shrimp eating the barnacles off our boat. In Jacksonville, we did hear something that seemed to come from all over the boat, and was louder anytime we were closer to the inside of the hull. Cool! Free bottom cleaning. We knew what it was, so we could sleep.

The last few nights, two months and many repairs later, I've been trying to chase down an electrical short. I could hear a popping that sounded like static electricity. Turn off the anchor light: still there. Turn off the inverter, still there. Turn off everything and stop the wind generator: still there.

I had my head down in the bilge to make sure the bilge pump wasn't zapping away in the bilge water. Hmm, it IS louder here. Wait, the bilge is still off! 

Then it all came back to me. Searching for the shrimp sound in Jacksonville. It still sounded different than what we heard on the St John River, so I found this article on clubsearay.com

So here is a little interesting thing that has had me puzzled....Maybe some of you Florida boaters have heard of this... I brought the boat to Florida from NY in November and on the way down each morning I would do my routine check in the engine room. Well somewhere in Florida waters, I started hearing this sound almost like rice crispy cereal after you pour the milk in..... Well all kinds of things were going through my head.....did I hit something and the hull is taking in water and expanding? The boat was performing perfectly and didn't notice any changes. I even had the boat short hauled by Marine Max in Naples as it was an uneasy feeling going back to NY for a couple of weeks. They inspected the hull and all looked fine....Well we just returned from a week long trip and while cleaning hearing it even more in other areas of the boat. Finally decided google it...... Turns out it's common in southern waters..friggin shrimp! Lesson learned.... Before you spend $600 for a short haul, google it idiot!!
Below is one of the many articles I found.... Maybe this will prevent another CSR member from scratching their head.......



As a cruiser, when you get to the warmer waters in Florida and further south, you may hear noisy crackling sounds coming from beneath your boat’s hull at night. The noise can be shocking if you do not know what you are hearing; is the boat breaking apart you think? The sound may be described as bacon cooking in a frying pan, the crackling of dry wood burning or Rice Krispies in a bowl of milk.





On the docks, it is often said that these sounds were merely krill feeding on the marine growth of your boat’s hull. Not so say marine biologists, it’s the sound of snapping shrimp.


The shrimp, Alpheus Heterochaelis, is a tiny one inch crustacean that exists in the shallow waters of sub tropical seas. It has two claws’, one larger than the other, which it uses to stun its quarry, such as tiny crabs, by snapping the largest claw close.


Researchers have only a short time ago found out how these little shrimp produce so much noise. At first they believed it was the clicking of the shrimps’ enlarged claws. And it is… more or less.


But it is now reported that the startling snap comes not from the clap of the claw itself but from a bubble produced by the claws’ quick closing movement.

Cool. Now I can sleep. Fire away, little Pistol Shrimp!