Solar Bimini

After a year of having the solar panels mounted on the cabin top we have taken the plunge and moved them onto a custom bimini frame. A much better position with less shade from above as well as they now provide shade to the seating behind the helm. The frame consists of 2 by 1.25" stainless tube bent so as to accommodate the current 2 solar panels as well as 2 new ones. In total we will have 800w of solar to keep the batteries charged up and avoid having to run the diesel.

Based on the solar output of these panels we can expect about  240 amps per day output. For us to generate the equivalent power using the Diesel engine we would need to run it for 2 hours. That's about 10 litres of fuel or $20 a day. The added bonus is that when the boat is at anchor or on a mooring ball we can leave the fridge and freezer running. There's nothing like a cold beer when returning to the boat. 

The system also helps to prolong the life of our batteries as they need to be charged to full capacity every couple of weeks to ensure they are kept in good condition. This is nearly impossible to do with the alternators on the primary diesel. Alternators are good to about 80% battery capacity but are really not suitable for topping off the last 20%.  The solar system will do this topping off. 

The next big project is the the watermaker. 

It's official we have a departure date

May 1st 2014 is it.

We have finally made our plans known to our work places and I have been given approval for 6 month leave after my initial request for 12 months. This works well as the cruising season in The South Pacific is May to October so our round trip will be 6 months. With the anticipated return date of 1st November 2014 to work.

Our rough schedule looks like this:

- Depart Sydney mid April to move the boat to Brisbane for final provisioning and fresh antifoul

- Depart Brisbane on suitable weather window after 1st May for Cato Island, Chesterfield reef, Huon reef and then Vanuatu

- Depart vanuatu for Fiji late May or early June 

- Participate in the musket cove cruising regatta second week of September 

- Return to Aus from Fiji in October

Onboard Navigation PC design and install.

It's been a long time since our last post. We've been sailing every weekend and enjoying the boat as a family. There is a lot to catch up on and I'll endeavour to get more posts done in the near future.

Our existing navigation systems on the boat are in reasonable condition but the cost of obtaining charts for our intended cruising area and spares for them is prohibitive. Our current installed equipment is:

• Raymarine pathfinder 70C with radar
• B&G network chart plotter, autopilot and instruments

That means 2 sets of charts in order to be able to use the two systems properly and of course they are not compatible. The unfortunate part is that they dont communicate with each other and have propietry communications protocol this makes getting information out of them a little more complicated but doable.

Knowing that the expected lifespan of the above components is well past due. I can either upgrade them to their modern day equivalents or alternatively convert the Boat to a PC based Navigation solution and slowly convert the systems to nmea 2000 compliant sensors. In the long run this will be more cost effective and actually give a more user friendly system. I'll even be able to replicate what is on the nav pc screen on an iPad or similar tablet.

It's a bit of challenge to design my own system for the boat. I have done this many times for my own personal pc over the years but have decided that it would be most effective to use one of the commercially available low power pc's in the market. If i want to modify it at a later date I can.

Through research and past experience I am leaning towards the Asus Eeebox pc. The chosen model is the EB1007p and runs off a miserly 15 watts in low power mode. It could be lowered even further by replacing the hard disk with a solid state drive, but this will be done at a later date if required. The pc requires 19v dc power but the boat system is a nominal 12v system, so a method of increasing the voltage is required one solution is a dc to dc converter like the one in this link.

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/390634246780?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649

One of the above units has been installed behind the nav panel and provides 19v dc for the pc. The pc works well as a nav computer but the refresh of maps and swapping between program windows is a little slower than your average desktop. I'm happy with the slower performance given the miserly power consumption. All up and including the 22" led monitor the power consumption in 3.1 amps. We are running opencpn as our navigation software.

Cruising masterclass at the 2013 Sydney International Boat Show

Yesterday and today liz and I are attending the cruising master class sessions being held at the Sydney international boat show. It has been put on as a no charge event and has had some great information for would be cruisers as well as those that are more seasoned. 

This is the schedule

Queens birthday weekend

We took advantage of the long weekend and headed north up to Pittwater. 

Leaving Saturday morning there was a reasonable SE swell left over from the stormy week past. As a precaution Liz and the kids took their sea sickness tablets and the results were great with no one suffering. One side effect is that they get very drowsy and within 30 minutes I was the only person onboard awake. First the kids jumped on their beanbags in the cockpit and fell asleep. This was shortly followed by Liz dozing off as well. Leaving me to look after the boat.  We've found the beanbags to be perfect for the kids to find a comfortable spot in all conditions. Below is a photo I snuck while everyone one was asleep. Olivia in the foreground and William firmly packed in between the cockpit table and seat. 

All this sleep happening while the boat was motor sailing along at 8.3 knots. Very relaxing. 

 We spend Saturday night at the Basin and then Sunday night around at refuge bay. Two of the highlights were

1. Teaching Olivia and William to make mud castles as a change from the regular sand castles. here Olivia is shoing off her tower made from sand / water droplets.

2. Teaching the kids how to catch nippers (yabbies) with the nipper pump. William was a natural at holding the sieve and Olivia was a great spotter. No one but me was game to pick them up for the transfer into the bucket.

The sunset on Sunday night was fantastic and I have to share it.

We all had a great time.

Now for some technical information

The solar panels are working great but with the overcast weather only provided 30 amps per day. We were using 60 to 100 amps per day. The alternator was playing up again and we couldn't charge the house batteries. The regulator is the cause this time. We came home with the batteries at 40% having used about 260 amps for the weekend. So sorting out the alternator regulator and adding the extra 400watts of solar angels should be able to cover our power needs.

A Bimini and Dodger are a must after sitting out in the rain on our return trip to Sydney harbour. It wasn't fun standing out there watching Liz and the kids being so warm inside. Having shelter from the rain would have made it a little more bearable. I must be getting soft!

Water consumption is a problem for our family. We are averaging 90 litres per day so with our 660 litres we will be filling up every 7 or so days. Not so good if you want to visit remote locations in the South Pacific. We need to work on reducing this or I need to get a water maker.

A little break to Thailand

Liz and I managed to get away to Thailand in Feb. It was originally going to be tacked on to a work conference I was attending. Spending cuts cancelled the conference but we decided it would be a good break and chance to see one of our potential cruising grounds.

We spent a week exploring Phuket Island and had a great time enjoying the people, sites and especially the food.

Here are some of our fav photos from the trip

This place looked very touristy but wasn't like the main beaches. It was a small lagoon leading into the bay

An Update on the project list

We are getting a bit slack on posting updates but here is a new one.

Well i can now say that we have achieved a number of the listed tasks since the original post in November last year. Some were straight forward and others a learning experience.

Here is the original list that we came up with. I've added in the current comments in italics with images when I remembered to take the photos.

1. Replace the hatch just in front of the mast as the Perspex is broken along the support hinge. Unfortunately this was not picked up in the survey as it had been covered by grip tape. It was a rude surprise to find the bedding soaked the first time we left the boat without the bow cover on. 

This task was achieved relatively easily once i was able to source a replacement hatch at a reasonable price. Locally the hatches retail for $700+, with a little searching on the Internet I was able to sort a replacement for $420 plus shipping. I combined the shipping with a list of optimist dinghy parts we required and ended up paying significantly less than the local source. The actual replacement was a fairly straight  forward job of about 3 hours all up.

2. Re-bed the stanchions. There are signs of leaks from these and we have confirmed at least one to be dripping when it rains. 

We turned this job into an all weekend exercise by combining it with a recaulk of the teak deck. Wehad managed to get a weekend without the kids. The stanchion rebedding went very well with the help of Liz and the caulking not so well as we made a few beginner errors. We've now learnt the importance of removing all of the previous calk as the old and new do not stick to each other. Luckily we had only done about 20% of the job before realising this. The good news is it allowed us to determine the right process to follow.. Ie. fill the void with a bead that is about 2 to 3 mm above the groove. This then shrinks during curing. Use a sharp chisel blade to shave off the excess calk and then sand down to the correct height. It is very important to use low shrinkage caulking. The image below shows a section where we had flattened down the caulk prior to curing. This is not the best way to do this and requires a lot of sanding.

Needless to say the recalking is still a work in progress.

3. Convert our walker bay dinghy to be a sailing dinghy. There is a sailing kit available for about $1000 but I have decided to rig it with optimist gear so that the kids are familiar with the optimist rig, when and if they choose to race. It will also stow more neatly. 

Job completed

4. Purchase and install a solar system. I'm thinking 800 to 1000 watts should be enough. This should equate to about 180 amps per day based on 40% production for 4 hrs and then 80% for the remaining 4 hrs per day. Using a worse case scenario of 8 hr long days.

We were able to complete this job in February with the help of a gift from my grandmother Betty. It was the perfect contribution to the boat. We purchased a 60 Amp MPPT charger and two 200w solar panels. In reality with this configuration we are able to get 110 Amps on a good day. This easily keeps up with our needs at anchor and we only run the engine for hot water or on a cloudy day. If we were to go to 800w we would have no need to run the engine.

5. Repair or replace the hatch for the sail locker in the bow. It is leaking in the rain so I can only imagine how bad it would be in the ocean with waves crashing over it. The frame seems to be bowed so the seal is poor. Maybe I can use the parts from item 1 to repair the bow locker hatch. Mmmmm?

This was a very easy repair and involved shaping the hatch back to a flat profile from the current bow that was the result of the hatch being pushed back over the inner forstay mount.

.

A Christmas Holiday

This post is related to boat jobs and troubleshooting carried out during our Christmas break. the following post will be about the actual holiday and the fun we had.

It's been over a month since our last post. We have been slack but there are plenty of things to distract us:

A. Christmas and all the preparations that go with it including visiting the grandparents and cutting wood in preparation for the wood fired oven to be running for 72 hours straight.
B. Children's end of year concerts, birthday parties and presentations
C. An absolutely mad amount of travel for work and the associated workload

Excuses aside we have managed to achieve a lot during this time. Mostly done at opportune times for ordering parts over the internet. We have ordered the parts to put a sailing rig on the dinghy from America and Melbourne. Ordered 400 watts of solar panels and a serious controller for them, both being sent from Melbourne. Mounting hardware and fuse blocks from America. All this was done in preparation for our Christmas break on the boat. My plan was to complete these projects when I could,if I could.

Lucky we had all the parts for these two projects on board with us, including the two huge solar panels because on the way up to Pittwater I noticed that although the motor was running at 2800 rpm there was no charge going into the batteries. I had suspected that there was a problem for a while but on our last outing the battery was charging fine from the alternators and had assumed the problem was only my imagination. (The starter battery is charged via another alternator and charge controller) Not so, and now we had no way to charge the house bank, two full fridges and a full freezer. I had no intention of spending my weeks holiday at a marina and quickly got to work troubleshooting. First thought was that the belt was slipping, so i rang my father who was coming to visit in 3 days and asked if he could bring some new belts. I couldn't find an obvious answer and started thinking of alternatives.

The answer in my mind was that I had to get the solar system wired in ASAP and within a couple of hours we had a functional solar system recharging the batteries and completely independent of the other charging methods. Setup in parallel the panels put in 110 amps on the first full day and 54 Amps on the 4th day which was overcast and very little sunshine. Good enough to keep us away from the dock. With the new belt installed there was still no charge. So out came all the books i had bought about troubleshooting and maintenance while dreaming of owning a boat big enough to cruise for long periods. After following all the possible causes it ended up being a dead alternator, something internal was not functioning correctly. So we were stuck with solar. It was a lovely peaceful couple of days.

My only problem now was that during the installation I had shorted across the terminals by brushing a spanner to close to the opposite terminal. This caused the battery monitor to loose its amp hour readings and no longer provide a state of charge reading. Literature said the battery was still at 60% charge but the monitor only read 25% and I was not going to risk the two very large and expensive batteries being run empty and suffering long term damage. So I had to come up with a method of charging the batteries up so I could reset the meter at 100% charge. So I removed the faulty alternator and connected up the battery charging cables to the starter motor alternator and ran the batteries up to 13.6 volts and allowed the solar charger to the the rest. Problem solved and another task added to the list. Replace house battery alternator and reset the charge controllers for the house and starter banks.

The next task for the holiday was to fit an optimist rig and foils onto the walker bay 8 we had inherited from my father. So out came the hand tools and within a Couple of hours we had a complete set of foils trial fit and ready to be varnished. It was good to be creating something and working with my hands. Two coats of varnish applied in the afternoon and everything was ready to be installed in the morning. Another hours work and we had a sailing dinghy. William and I went for a test sail in the lightest of breezes and I can confirm that it did actually sail. It brought back the memories of all the good times I had when I was just 5 or 6 years old and would sail the dinghy that my father had put together for me in the same bay as Will and I took that first test sail. Olivia didn't take long to want to join in and then there was 3 of us...