Mark One electric drive throttle

We went down to King Malu to try to get the throttle working. No it wasn't necessary, but I will sleep more peacefully knowing that the new motor is controllable!

It's amazing what you can make out of an expired MEA Elite Club membership card, a couple of gear wheels from a remote control model car, some 5mm threaded rod and a small piece of wood.

The first attempt was a failure. The voltages we were getting were strange and unpredictable. That was till I realised they had sold us a logarithmic rather than linear potentiometer.

Replacing it with the linear pot we got the following voltages:


Forward max throttle is 4.38 volts
'Neutral' centre throttle is 2.7 volts
Reverse max throttle is 0.8 volts

The central 'neutral' position is slightly variable between 2.7 and 2.85 due to mechanical movement in the morse lever. There is a little play in the rig we attached to the morse control but most actually comes from the chain linkage down from the morse lever.

We will rebuild the mounting for the two gear wheels and potentiometer for the final version.

Paint, gear wheels and rolling wheels

I went down at 8:30 before work and put a second layer of the laquer paint on the for'ard cabin. It covered well, but not perfectly, was a pain because the hairs kept coming out of the brush. I think we might have hair problems because the cleaning solvent 'melts' the glue holding the hairs in the brush... not sure, but when it happens it's a total pain!

Anyway, I now think we have done all the painting for this year. The cabins are serviceable, albeit not luxury. Next lift out we'll do some concentrated work on upgrading the cabins.

At lunch time we went looking for some gear wheels. We need to attach a 2:1 ratio gear set to the morse control to work the potentiometer for the electric drive. Tim had a brainwave over night - remote control model car gear wheels. We went to the specialist remote control model shop in Larnaca and found exactly what we need. I'm not sure the shop owner really understood us, partly because of his English and our lack of Greek and partly because we are not building a remote control model car, but a full size yacht!

On the way home from work we put some new chunky wheels on the gangplank. Although the wheels looked great, one had already broken. We'll see how these fare.

Painting the for'ard cabin

Well, the gangplank is now is use and much easier to get on and off King Malu. Whether it's good enough to be called a passerelle is another matter. Hmmm... in the photo it does look good.

We started this morning by tidying up and piling up the junk from the boat that was multiplying... or seemingly multiplying... around our house ready to take to the tip sometime this week. Obviously there is a load of parts of the old engine, but sadly there were spares for the old engine too. I think it won't even fit in one car load!

We then glued the new for'ard cabin/heads door. We are making it out of 2 layers of 5mm marine ply with an edge of 8mm marine ply between to make a gap and lighten the door. Cleo, one of our cats, is very investigative and kept following us around, keeping well clear of the wood glue while we spread it. Then I needed to cut another piece of wood and used the rotary saw for that. Cleo, flew across the room, straight over the wood glue, leaving footprints in the glue and sticky paws on herself. Sadly washing it off made her sick later in the day.

Down at King Malu we screwed in the final two cowls just in front of the main mast. These have cover plates so that we can remove them for day sailing and only use them when we are on longer passages. Both of the two heads have extractor fans in them, but neither of the two fans work! Another job for another day.

After lunch I painted the for'ard cabin. Originally I had intended just doing beside the beths which was pretty manky and gross green (if you could call it that) colour... the colour was close to that of fetid pondwater.  When I started I realised that I had to paint the ceiling too, since moving one of the lockers back to make a work surface had exposed some equally unsavoury ceiling panelling. Anyway, should look much better,  but more work than I hoped. Needs another coat sometime this week.

Meanwhile Tim cleaned up with the miracle cleaner ('pink stuff') the stern cabin ready for painting sometime in the near future. I couldn't face any more painting today and we are beginning to run short of internal marine paint.

After that we tried to fit the spotlight in the stern heads. There were two wires coming down inside the door post to bare ends where the switch should be. Easy... just attach a new wire, draw it through and wire it up. Tim, suggested soldering the new wire to the old. Being impetuous, I just twisted them together. Of course, it didn't work and the wires separated mid way inside the door post. So with the other wire I did get out the soldering iron and connected them together firmly. But... the wire wouldn't go through some of the tight bends at the top of the door frame.

Next we attached a piece of very light cord to one of the wires and drew that through. The intention was to use that to pull the new wires through. But... it separated from the wire with the wire half way down the inside of the door post. Somehow the door post had been split, so we then wedged a screwdriver in the split, splitting it wider, and foraged for the wire with a bent coat hanger. Bent coat hangers are one of the more useful tools invented. Amazing what you can do with them!

Eventually, wires through the door post (which will need gluing and clamping sometime this week to repair) and the spot light works.

Gangplank now in use

During the week we have been trying to make a cover for the inflatable dinghy. The reason for this is that the bottom of the dinghy is black and when its on the foredeck upside down it gets very hot due to the sun. So we decided to make one out of the 'spare' WeatherMax we had ordered. We made the plan and took it round to Sheila's on Thursday, as you can read in the blog, that was not entirely successful.

This morning we started at 8:30 with the sewing machine we inherited with the yacht. We managed to get two seams attaching tape to the the back of the cover, but then the machine was not happy stitching the ends of the tapes. We 'kind of' finished it and Tim went into the Singer shop on the way to King Malu to get some more needles and to ask about servicing the machine.

First job at King Malu was to attach wheels and the fixings to the boat for the gangplank. That went well and then we tried using some shock cord and the halyard from the mizzen sail to support it. Kind of worked, except the shock cord stretched too much.

Then Costas from Raymarine arrived and we discussed what we would do about navionics. The extra expense on the new motor means we don't really have funds this year for everything we might want... actually it might be a blessing in disguise: Raymarine have just released a new series of widescreen  chart plotters. These new chart-plotters use digital rather than analogue radomes. So, our current plans is to put in a cheaper chart-plotter this year and trade it in for a new digital radar/chart-plotter next year.

Then off to Comar to buy some parts to finish off the gangplank... well, not finish off, but get it serviceable for a while. We really want to have nice handholds along the gangplank but the cost of 25mm stainless tube here is ridiculous, so for the moment we have one with a rope linking to the boat. Serviceable, but not pretty.

Whack... or I should say WHACK... as I walked into the boom without noticing. Now have a bump on my forehead. Fortunately was wearing a leather hat which protected me somewhat. First time in 8 months. Not bad I suppose.

We glued the final piece of Treadmaster down: This is above the vents from the for'ard heads. We had thought about making a dorade/step combined, but seems too much work right now, so we have already bought too cowls and will mount them tomorrow.


Finally, we fitted the locker back in the for'ard cabin, leaving a work surface there, and allowing a lot more light into the for'ard cabin. The whole cabin feels much more open now.

'Pass the pink spray and some kitchen towel.'

Then final task before leaving was to clean all the surfaces that need painting in the for'ard cabin so that hopefully tomorrow we can put first coat of paint on them. Pink spray? I think it's actually called Miracle Cleaner. It seems to be a miracle cleaner on grease and oil and other much. No idea what it does to your lungs - there isn't a health warning on it, and one of the main ingredients is citric acid, which makes it smell nicely of lemons.

The ceiling panels cleaned up nicely at the same time. There is still scorching from the fire that the previous owner had in this cabin, but replacing the veneer for the surfaces is something will be postponed till 2011.

Talking of miracles, its amazing that King Malu still exists and that the previous owner is still alive. The scorching from the fire happened while the previous owner was sleeping in the stern cabin and a 12 volt fan in the for'ard cabin caught fire, filled the place with smoke and then put itself out. And no... the previous owner didn't have smoke detectors anywhere on board. But we will!

Controller for electric drive

One thing that has been bothering me for some time is how to interface our morse control lever with the new electric drive chain. Yesterday I was sent a diagram from  electro-vehicles.eu which helped a lot.

It appears that the engine throttle is controlled by a potentiometer across a 5 volt supply. There are two switches - one for forward and one for reverse.

OK, makes sense but how on earth do you do this on a yacht? A yacht morse controller moves forward to increase throttle and backwards to also increase throttle from a central null point.

For days I have been puzzling thinking of this and then suddenly, very late at night it came to me:

Use a DC:DC converter to create a negative 12 V from the positive 12 V and then use a dual gang potentiometer (attached to the existing Morse controller) so that the centre is 0V and with one track wired inverted. Moving one way will increase volts on one track and moving other way will increase volts on the other track, the diode mixer will mean moving either direction from the centre off will increase voltage to the output.

Only about 20% of the 270 degree track would be used in each direction due to the throw of the Morse controller. For protection, use a 5V zener to ensure it never goes over 5V and a 2 way switch (also attached to the existing Morse controller) to switch between forward and reverse. May need some fiddling of components to get voltages correct for the amount of travel of the potentiometer.

I slept peacefully after realising this and then in the morning woke and realised I could use two op-amps connected to the output of the potentiometer tacks to provide the forward and reverse connection.

But simpler still... when I read my email from Andrea at electro-vehicles.eu... they can program the controller to accept centre null and forward/reverse off the one control. They call this 'wig-wag' in motor vehicles... we call it morse control in yachts!

Making a cover for the inflatable dinghy

OK, it's late... frustrating evening trying to make a cover for the inflatable dinghy. Went to Sheila at 4pm, for her to sew it... and left later than we should without it complete. (Her sewing machine was playing up)

Tried to use the protestant sewing machine at our home (protestant = unorthodox) and failed. (The power cable is missing)

Then tried to get the one we inherited with King Malu going. Just about succeeded. Tomorrow or Friday we will finish it... I hope.

So does anyone know about servicing sewing machines?

Treadmaster complete

Looks great the Treadmaster doesn't it? We taped it together over night as we had found that the joints tend to pull appart if left untaped.

Looking at the dinghy we thought about the need for a cover. The black bottom when inverted gets very hot in the sun.

I'm writing this post 6 days later and I cannot for the life of me remember what else we did all day. But I do remember working the whole day on the boat. Days seem to merge into days when refitting a boat that hasn't been sailed for 8 years. There is so much to do to bring her up to standard.

Fender cages and horseshoe

Today was a day of accidents and completion. Accidents? Well, we needed four more fender cages. We had bought them from Comar Marine and been advised it was a four handed job to fit them.

They were right. It was a horrid fiddle. We had a clip to join two cages... easy enough for two hands... and two clips to fix to the rails... difficult for even four hands.

The design for the clips to the rails is stupid. Fiddly in the extreme and needs an allen key to tighten the bolts, the nuts of which have to be held in place with a screwdriver rammed between the nut and the plastic, upside down.

In the process I dropped an allen key. The allen key that fitted! And allen keys being metal sink very fast. Fortunately we found that we did have an allen key fitting for the electric screwdriver. The electric screwdriver had a wrist strap. I was glad of that as I didn't want to drop that too!

The second thing to fit was the horseshoe lifebuoy. That was almost as fiddly, but in different ways. The nuts and bolts fit two from one side and two from the other. Why? Beats me!

And... of course the diameter of the railing was not quite the same as the diameter of the fixing. We persuaded it to fit. A bit of gentle persuasion, in the way of just tightening up to let the plastic bend around. Now we need to get King Malu in lettering on the horseshoe. Not necessary, but will make it look complete

Looks great from the back now, and Tim got the idea that we could  mount a triangular shaped davits off the brackets for the wind autohelm. Now that was a really great idea. They would be held in place while sailing by a couple of webbing straps and pushed out of the way when we entered a marina.

In the afternoon we stuck down the Treadmaster on the stern cabin roof. At last, that is now finished.

New inflatable dinghy

This is Kataklysmos weekend, the weekend Orthodox Christians celebrate both the flood that only Noah and his family survived and the giving of the Holy Spirit. In reality it has become a festival similar to Mardi Gras for the Catholics, with stalls and loads of cheap junk sold to unsuspecting purchasers, fireworks and a fun fair along Finikoudes.

For the Larnaca Nautical Club it's an excuse for a sail. On Kataklysmos Monday there is a sail and races round to Finikoudes and lunch at MacDonalds. For us, we decided on a sail in the Wayfarer and to try out the new inflatable dingy. So on Saturday we went down to the club and while I got Galini ready for her second sail of the season, Tim inflated the dinghy.

Tim took Jacob and left before us... motoring round to King Malu. It was straight into the wind, so tacking back and forth we had no chance of catching them up. We thought we saw them at a couple of times, around the port starboard buoy and called them on the marine band radio, but had no response.

Eventually they hailed us, when we were about half a mile out from the marina. They had reached the marina, unloaded the motor and Jacob had rowed round to King Malu and then helped hoist the dinghy onboard and it was now tied down on the foredeck.

Apparently Jacob had helmed the dinghy the whole way round from the club and the marine band hand held radio had been in the storage bag clipped to the front of the dinghy and neither of them had heard us calling them above the noise of the outboard.

Paguro generator preparation and a few small jobs

Funny day really... didn't feel like we achieved a lot... but I guess we did.

We started with checking out the refrigeration system, having got the pump primed and working yesterday. It appears the pump doesn't like to pump water back directly into the sea, but rather pump out into air. So after much working out we decided to pump into the cockpit drain rather than to a sea cock on the bottom of the boat.  The working that way the refrigeration worked very well indeed and both the fridge and freezer cooled down to very cold. Made the water in the fridge nice to drink. This will be good for the summer.

Then we worked on getting the chain/deck wash pump working. That was a bit fiddly, but worked. Really we need a pressure tank or something to make it continuous, since the pump pressures the water in spurts. Need more research there.

Next we made the mounts for the new Paguro generator.  We cut wood blocks and created the mounts ready for attaching to the platform where the old generator was placed.

Final job of the day was to remove the old wiring harness for the old generator and old diesel engine. In doing that we found something really weird. There was power to the old diesel engine control panel that didn't come from the domestic control panel nor did it come from the engine power. It appears to come from a point after the main domestic power isolator but before the breaker panel... which means there is no breaker on that circuit. That is the only wire in the loom I need to trace and work out what its doing.

Having removed all the wiring it would now be nice to remove the old fireproofing/sound insulation which looks really old and tired and replace it with something new and modern, so as well as having a new engine, the engine room looks nice and clean. The new motor has a much lower probability of fire hazard so we don't need so much fire proofing, and making soundproofing the already sound proofed generator should make it mega quiet.

The good, the bad and the ugly

The good is that we completed fixing the liferaft in place, the bad is problems we are having with the pump for the fridge/freezer and the ugly is the problems we are having redesigning the fitting for the new motor, having realised our original idea wouldn't work! We had hoped to use a couple of pieces of angle iron and weld to the end a plate for the motor, but today realised that the hull gets in the way of the extended angle iron.

The liferaft though is really good. I am very pleased with the mounting of that. Of course, I thought it might be an hour or an hour and a half, but in fact took the whole morning. There are six bolts (created out of threaded rod) holding it in place. four were easy, two were not. One of the two difficult was due to coming through at the edge of the heads compartment. The other one was the inside corner of the heads and was exceedingly difficult and fiddly to get to the nut on the end of the threaded rod.

The pump for the fridge freezer seems under powered and doesn't self prime. Not happy with that. We will have to re-look at that tomorrow. Maybe try another pump.

Oh... and Daniel and Jacob did some whippings so the kicking strap for the main sail and the sheet for the mizzen sail should now work.

I keep hoping for news about the new motor and the new generator. The saying is 'no news is good news' but I am not so sure. I would really like the new motor to be in before the end of the month.

New cooker fitted

This evening I wanted to get the electrics in for the cooker and Tim was going to glue the side cheeks in for the cooker. But unlike many times, we achieved very much more than normal. Having completed the electrics and gluing/screwing the side cheeks, repairing some other wood pieces with glue, sticking in a cable guide in the bilges... we still had some time. So we set to and fitted the cooker.

This achieved two things: Firstly it moved the cooker from the saloon and secondly it made the galley look like a galley.

We also replaced the electrical facia panels above the chart table so King Malu is now looking much more like a working sailing yacht than a boat in wet dock.

Fit genoa, anchor, microwave

Today was a day of completing a few background jobs ready for the next weekend when we hope to get the frame in for the new motor.

Firstly we fitted the genoa. Charmiane had reduced the genoa cover so we intended just hoisting it back up after the genoa.

First we replaced the spinnaker halyard. This hayard was badly worn and since it will be used for the bosun's chair was essential to be safe. Tim had brought back 200 metres of 12mm Liros braid on braid from the UK. Tim stitched it to the old halyard and we hauled it over the block at the top of the mast and then Tim whipped the snap shackle to the end.

What we had not noticed before we hoisted the genoa was that the spinakker halyard was twisted over the genoa halyard, so when we came to hoist the cover it didn't go up to the top. Which meant dropping the cover, dropping the genoa, untwisting the lines and then rehoisting the genoa and rehoisting the cover. This time it worked well.

Next job was to fit the anchor. We have two anchors, a plow and a Danforth. The Danforth was what was on the boat when we took it over so that was going to be our main and the plow as a backup. So we fitted the Danforth in position using our newly working winch and tried to shut the winch hatch... but it wouldn't close. No way would the winch hatch close over the Danforth. Then we remembered that the starboard winch hatch had been broken. Now we new why!

So we went back for the plow and brought that on board, and that fitted beautifully. However, it's slightly rusty so will need cleaning and painting. A job for another day.

Then we fitted the microwave. A little bit of a fiddle but went in well.

Final task of the day: fit the cooker. The new cooker is smaller than the old one, so we had already made side cheeks which were to be mounted to the galley and the cooker fitted between them. It felt a little like the BBC TV show Blue Peter, 'Here is something I prepared earlier...'

We used threaded rod and nuts on each side, embedded into the wood side cheeks. Not an easy task.

When finally fitted we found that we were still 16mm too narrow, so we went back to Tim's flat and planed down some wood facing for the side cheeks. This will need gluing during the week.

Then cut the cradle for the liferaft - solid teak - and though solid in general we found a crack which needs epoxy gluing. Two steps forward and one back...

Clean up the boat, plan the new engine room

The entire lower deck was filthy, particularly the floor boards. So the morning was taken up cleaning and returning tools to their proper homes. We'd found some amazing cleaning spray from Andreou Brothers, pink in color it cuts through the oil and grease and the boat is beginning to look like it is a yacht again.

In the afternoon Ken came down and took more measurements and worked out an idea for how the elctric drive chain and the battery bank can be mounted in the engine room.

One little job to complete for the day: Fit the controls for the new winch. Fitting the foot switches went much easier than expected, making them work was not. The wire for the 12 volt control for the foot switches was dead. Nothing at all... eventually I worked out that it was actually coming from the pump control under the for'ard heads, where I found it totally unconnected to anything.

Under the for'ard heads there was also a red wire also connected to nothing at all. Tracing that wire back I found it under the port  locker, still connected to nothing. So we connected it up to the 12 volt breaker panel, connected it under the for'ard heads and then we had control power for the winch!

Remove generator and other parts

Tim and I came back this morning and worked hard on removing the old Yanmar generator. This too had seen better days. We split it into three parts: flywheel, engine and generator. All were really heavy, but not as heavy as the main engine and gearbox.

With effort we managed to remove them from the engine room, and... remove them from the boat. They are now sitting in the drive of my house. Not content with that we then removed the gearbox from the boat. Ken had suggested putting the main engine on a plank and manhandling that off, but there was no way were were going to attempt that!

Final task of the day: Clean out the the engine room. I scrubbed and cleaned using washing detergent.

It was a really filthy job, but amazing to see the result - the engine room floor was white!

There is still a lot of wiring to remove before we start re-building with the new electric drive, but it was absolutely amazing to see the engine room so bright and shiny.

On the starboard side the plate where the old Yanmar can be seen. We are most likely to replace it with a new quiet and automatic Paguro. I say 'automatic' because the old Yanmar needed you to manually control the speed of the motor to control the voltage.

With the hose on the boat we finally decided to hose down the deck and scrub the teak in case any oil had got onto the wood.

Water, water, everywhere,

And all the boards did shrink; 

Water, water, everywhere,

Nor any drop to drink. 

I have no idea where Samuel Coleridge got that idea from. Teak expands when you wet it. And it cleaned up nicely, but with water everywhere I got thoroughly wet.

Finally extricating the engine

The previous weekend Ken and Tim had done amazing work getting almost anything that could be removed detached from the engine and removed. Today we all arrived down and set to work on extricating the engine itself. No small task!

Ken brought some planks and we wedged one underneath and with a winch attached to a rope we put round the main mast and down through the saloon hatch we slowly winched the engine out of the engine room.

Jacob, our midshipman, was with us for the day and he reported that there were cries of 'Quick, Jacob, bring this...' and 'Jacob, quick, push that in there... at times while I was in the engine room holding something (like the engine from slipping off the plank), Ken was in the saloon holding something (like the engine from slipping off the plank) and Tim as holding something (like the winch) and balancing something (like the engine from falling off the plank with his foot).

The photo shows the relief on Ken's face with the engine safely on the floorboards of the saloon. My head can be seen poking through the engine room hatch and shows the size of the gap we got it through.

Having remove the engine block, we then proceeded to remove the clutch and gearbox. This was nearly as heavy as the engine block. By mid afternoon we covered the extracted remains with plastic sheet to stop getting more oil everywhere and left for the day.