Fire!

A little after sunset last night I layed down to goto sleep. A few mins later it started to smell kinda dusty. I thought to myself, “Since I stopped smoking I can really smell things alot better”, and tryed to go to sleep. A min later smelled like something electrical was burning. Got out of bed and looked outside and saw smoke pouring from the side of my boat. The junction of wires from my small solar panels to a “zip cord/extention cord” must have got smashed under the boats “pop top” and when I closed it it made a short in the wires. I grabbed at the wires to rip them apart. Then smoke started coming from inside the boat. The wires from that junction to the battery bank turned into a heating element from a oven and were totally melted and smoking. I cut the main wires by the battery bank it was going to and a second later the wires burst into flames. I blew out the fire and tried to yank the wires to a place I could see them and burned my already dry peeling fingers kinda bad. Opened up all the hatches on the boat to air out all the smoke. My neighbors must have freaked out from the smell and smoke billowing out of the hatches. I made sure ALL power was disconnected and tried to sleep again. Was up most of the night smelling smoke once and awhile and freaking out.

This morning I surveyed the damages. Hooked up each solar panel and amazingly they still worked. I figured my cellphone charger would be toast forsure, but it was fine. The only damages were a bunch of melted “zip cord”. I have been using extetion cord since I was like 10 years old doing electrical projects. I never would have thought 12v dc could over power it, but now I will never use it again. Was scary.