Fishing in the marina?

No fishing in the marina?

That's the harbour-master on the left and Tim on the right...

 They are fishing at the end of the pontoon that King Malu is moored to...

And this is what they caught... the cover for the electrical panel that had fallen off and was then residing on the bottom of the water!

Test system

Alongside the dashboard and console displays, I have also been developing the equipment needed for dealers to maintain an electric drive system. So this is a smaller display with all control PLUS extra dealer configuration information that I have been working on.

The 20 HP Honda outboard

The little 20 HP Honda outboard has served us well and at the next lift out we will remove it and we'll look more like a yacht again! This is good news because it means that the electric drive system has now done more than a year on King Malu without a problem and we are prepared to trust it as our primary source of propulsion (excluding the sails of course).

Dashboard display

I've been working on the dashboard display for the hybrid electric drive. On the Nicholson 39 the dashboard is small, being an old style yacht so the space for the chart plotter is also small.

This means than the chart display is small, which in turn means you can either see chart clearly or numbers (SOG, etc) clearly.

So the intention is that the navionics numbers will also be displayed on the new touch screen I'm working on.

The display has multiple display modes and allows you to set the motor drive mode too. More on this later when we make it all public.

Power busbar

One of the things important for electric drives is the power feeding the motor. The EU and US Coastguard have produced a lot of new regulations for electric boats and we have been busy reading them and developing the systems to comply with all the regulations.

Firstly all battery banks must be able to be isolated with double pole isolators. Secondly they must all break down into 48v banks. Thirdly you must not connect them to earth/ground. Fouthly you must monitor and alert the user if there is earth/ground leakage...

I must admit that to start with I thought they were a pain, but having developed them I now realise that they really help and have found none of them that are un-necessary.

End users, of course, are not really interested in complexity. They want it simple. So I have designed a PCB to integrate all the power control systems into the touch screen controller. Worked first time... well, actually second time but I was thrilled to see how easy it makes it for normal sailors.

No sailing... being a Grandpa

I've just spent the last month with absolutely no sailing. That I missed.

BUT... I have been in the UK with my son, daughter-in-law and... wait for it... my new grandson. It kind of makes up for the lack of sailing!

So when will I get a chance to teach him to sail?

Another short test of the display for the electric motor.

A short test of the display for the electric motor.

OK, I admit it we did raise the sails and sail for a very few minutes. But sadly it wasn't long enough!

And... you've learned we test on real boats not just in the workshop!

A short test of the display for the electric motor

A short test of the display for the electric motor

Final shot from Jasmine City

A last look around the bay and round towards the Rock of Gibraltar. Tomorrow we start back for Cyprus.

Chain gang

Loading the spare anchor, anchor chain and rode into the for'ard locker

Last day on Jasmine City

This is Tim and my last day on on Jasmine City. Tomorrow morning we will fly to London.

The trip down from Sines in Portugal to La Linea in Spain, via an abortive short visit to Morocco was interesting to say the least. While we were sitting at the cafe yesterday evening enjoying tabas and beef burger and whatever else, Tim was reviewing what I had posted on the blog, and said that I hadn't posted much about the storm. THE STORM. In passing I had mentioned that we left Sines very slightly earlier than originally planned because the weather looked (from the shore) to have improved, but...

Earlier that day another Lagoon, a 560, had moored in Sines. They looked as if they had had enough of the weather and were looking for refuge too. As we left, one of the crew was watching us leave and I could almost feel her thoughts of  'Are they crazy, we're here for the refuge and they are going out in it…'

We motored out into the outer harbour to raise the mainsail. We headed directly but relatively slowly for the extension to the harbour wall as Bisher helmed the boat, Tim controlled the lines and Olivier climbed the mast. It takes a minimum of two people to hoist or drop the mainsail with this new on-boom furling system. We got it up with space to spare before the breakwater, but not a lot.

Having raised the sail we took off with full main and full genoa directly south on a beam reach.  However… having had high winds for a couple of days from the south west and then south, and now from the west the seas were confused and messy. I was eating crystallized ginger - a natural cure for seasickness. Tim's prediction of 3m swell proved to be correct and even the ginger and a week on board didn't keep the sea sickness at bay. I lay down, while Tim cooked dinner for the rest of the crew.

The wind increased during the evening and into the night. Olivier was on watch and Tim sleeping in the saloon so that he was quickly available if needed. Olivier said he saw in one of the squalls the wind increase from the 40+ knots to 50 something, then 60 something then all the way up to 82 knots at the height of the squall. He was bearing off on the autopilot, but decided that against all that he really wanted, they would have to go on deck as the main had to come down, so he woke Tim.

Out to the flybridge they went, prepared everything, started the motors, headed into the wind and awaited their opportunity. The wind abated for a few minutes to high 30s so they took their chance and with Tim on the winches and ropes, Olivier, whose balance is amazing, went out onto the deck and up the mast to guide the mainsail down and put some straps on it. Success. He said it was a good job it was dark as they couldn't see the terrifying seas.

Then we were sailing on just a reefed genoa. However, to say it was now an easy passage would be to make a false claim. The confused seas were crashing on our starboard beam and giving Bisher concerns about what might break in his brand new boat. His cabin is on the starboard side so he got the worst of the crashing. He said he was sure in the light of day we would find a crack somewhere, but we didn't.

Tim then returned to our cabin. He had elected to sleep feet to head/head to feet. This was his pragmatic approach to ensuring that if I did throw up it would be over his feet and not his head! As the boat dropped away from waves I could feel myself flying above the berth. This was even worse for Tim, whose head was at the bow end of the cabin. We got the zero G force effect that some people pay money to experience. Free for Tim and me!

Sometime during the night I was woken to get up because the electronics were not working. The iPad repeater of the bridge navionics was not working. I cannot for the life of me remember now what the problem was, but somehow in my semi-dazed state I solved it and we were back able to helm and watch from the relative comfort of the saloon/chart table. I then raced for the bathroom, while the rest of the crew sailed the boat.

First light saw us with the sea state calming, I came up feeling nearly human again. As the day wore on and the sea state calming and winds down to 30 knots and then 20 and eventually we were motor sailing from Cape St Vincent towards the Straits of Gibraltar.

Final night sailing and Tim and I could take a realistic watch again. My shoulder is now back to 70-80% but I am being very careful and a sudden movement shoots stabbing pain around the top of my arm. This is pretty close to what Tim had over a year ago, so he is very sympathetic and keeps encouraging me to keep my posture good so as to keep my shoulder improving.

After night watch we went to our berths in relative comfort. I awoke early and went up to see the sun rising over the Straits of Gibraltar. It was stunning. It exceeded my expectations. By now we were seeing the big ships entering and leaving the straits. Somehow we had timed it almost perfectly. We arrived at the Traffic Separation Scheme between lanes, having crossed the lane outbound on the previous watch. We therefore sailed up the middle, avoiding the numerous fishing boats and, at the point where all the ferries crossed, moved to the northern coast of Morocco.

The marine band radio announced a pan-pan message asking all ships to look out for a wooden boat with 11 passengers that had capsized somewhere in the straits. There are so many people from Africa attempting the dangerous and often overloaded attempt to covertly get into the EU. We never heard, but I suspect this was another of the casualties of this problem. Poverty creates desperation.

The trip in and out of Smir was uneventful if unsuccessful. Then it was across the straits again, full genoa and engines racing to try to beat the current. Finally arrived that the very beautiful and efficient marina of La Linea. Mooring was tricky as there was a 30+ knot north west wind, but Olivier again proved his capability with the Lagoons and we're safely in Spain. Today we all agreed, this marina is definitely a serendipitous find. Tomorrow, sadly in some ways, we leave the boat. That having been said, I'm really looking forward to seeing wife and family again.

Arrived in Jebel Tarik... now commonly called Gibraltar

Well, having sadly had customs problems in Morocco, we made some quick phone calls to other marinas in Gibraltar and then Spain. All the Gibraltar marinas were full but we struck gold with finding that there was a new marina in La Linea which is just on the Spanish side of the border.

So, we made a quick dash... motor sailing at up to 8 knots across the straits of Gibraltar to La Linea. The new marina has 850 spaces and is fantastic. The wind was difficult coming in - 30 knots behind us - so mooring was tricky to say the least. But we're here and we overlook the rock.

Jasmine City moored in La Linea

Film of crossing the straights of Jebel Tarik/ Gibraltar

On the way to Gibraltar

Problems here, so we're on the way to Gibraltar! More news later.

Arrived Morocco

We have arrived in Morocco and are awaiting clearance. We left Sines earlier that we originally proposed because while walking around Sines the weather looked like it was improving.





However, this was only fooling us, in fact it deteriorated. I got pretty sea sick for the first night and the guys told me they saw 80 knots on the wind speed indicator! It was pretty hairy changing sails. Meanwhile to say I was sick in my bunk would not be true, I was only in my bunk for about 75% of the time, the rest of the time I was flying as the boat dropped away beneath me.

Then it really did improve and the run into the straits of Gibraltar was amazing, as was our timing! The sun rose over the straights.

Leaving Sines tonight or tomorrow for Morocco, probably via Gibraltar

This is the track for Jasmine City, which is owned by by a friend of ours called Bisher. This is the second leg of the delivery from Sines in Portugal to Morocco.

Tracking for the first leg of Jasmine City can be found at the following post: 'Delivery and sea trials for Jasmine City'

Weather has broken, now waiting for the swell to reduce

Wind speed in the marina

Beaufort 8 - 'Gale'

The wind got up to 64knots, but it took a few moments for me to find the camera. Olivier got a picture of it nearly at the height.  I'm very glad we're holed up in a marina in Portugal rather than out on the Atlantic, with a predicted 3 metre swell and a confused sea because of the wind direction change.

If all goes well, we'll leave either late tonight or early in the morning when the wind will have dropped and the waves more manageable!

Repairing the broken parts on the furling main sail.

Not removing a caught Q flag... But part of the Parasailor...

Is this day 4 or 5?

When you get on a sailing boat for some time, somehow days seem to merge into one another, you almost lose track of time. You develop a different rhythm of life, based upon the needs of the boat. There are four of us on the boat, and overnight there has to be at least one person on watch, and watches last for two hours, so your sleep is somewhat disturbed and so you also sleep during the day. This is the rhythm of life on a boat.

DAY 1: We left at 9pm on Thursday. I remember that much. We had worked hard for three days getting the boat ready. A new boat is not ready to sail. It might have all the linen on board, but this is equipping a small mobile home, so there are pots and pans to buy, food and provisions. And when we say provisions it's not just the food, but all the little things like salt and pepper and other sauces. We had to get a microwave, and all the things needed for bathrooms.

And it wasn't quite finished. There was a washing machine from Korea that had been freighted over by and and needed fitting. This took Costas, the distributor for Lagoon, the best part of a whole day to do. This is a special upright washing machine like I have never seen before. Light weight, not the really heavy front loaders we have in Europe normally.

Then there was the sea trial as part of the handover procedure. This boat has one of the new roller booms that Lagoon are developing, and it broke on the sea trial, so they then had to get new parts sent over from the factory to be fitted before we left.

I had a frozen shoulder, what they call 'iPad shoulder' I think, which made things doubly difficult. Getting on and off the boat required me to grit my teeth catch hold of the boat with my good arm and one leg, then hoist myself up enough to grab with my bad arm in a way that didn't make me scream with pain. It worked but took a lot of effort. In between all this we had fantastic French cuisine in the evening at different restaurants in Les Sables.

So... Back to the story... We left at 9pm and ate our first meal of the trip on board. The winds across the Bay of Biscay we predicted to be almost perfect for a downwind run from Les Sables to the north western tip of Spain. If all goes well it will take two days across the bay. The Bay of Biscay is notorious for bad weather so I was somewhat apprehensive, especially with a bad shoulder. I don't have great balance at the best of times and the thought of falling and not being able to catch myself... well... it made me even more careful than usual.

DAY 2: The night watches went well. One thing that's really cool about the new Raymarine E-series chartplotters is that you can view and control them remotely with an iPad or Android tablet. This means that you can stay in the relatively warm saloon which has great all round visibility and watch the radar and AIS for other ships without sitting outside in full foul weather gear. You still need it on or available as if the sails need trimming then it's out into the cold of the Bay of Biscay you go. Tim and I were doing a double watch together, because my arm would not allow me to trip sails too easily, even with electric winches.

Today we sail with just the genoa. Nobody is really excited about trying the roller main sail. And we're doing good speed because of the wind.

DAY 3: Today is time to try the new furling main sail in daylight. But... sadly it breaks again. This time it's a lot worse than the first time, as some parts jam in the luff, making it impossible to completely raise or lower the sail. Frankly that makes me edgy, being unable to easily drop the mainsail if you needed to in an emergency.

So we spend the rest of the day attempting to un-jam it sending emails back to the manufacturer for advice and comment. We have a Thrane and Thrane Sailor 250 system on board. It's very expensive, but really, really efficient.

Today is not a good day, not only is the sail broken, but I get sea sick. Makes me feel less than fully able to pull my weight when I'm in my bunk feeling like nothing on earth.

DAY 4: We pass Cape Finistere. And I'm feeling a lot better! We found a way to drop the main sail and put it up again. It's not easy but possible. And that's a big step forward. And Cape Finistere is spectacular.

Alongside the Raymarine chart plotter we're using iSailor on my iPad and PocketGrib on the iPad to download weather forecasts over the satellite internet? This is the new version of iSailor and it's very much improved in all functions except for one, and that is plotting multi waypoint routes. That feature used to work well, but the new way, I cannot get the hang of. I've read the tutorial, and it just doesn't seem to work for me. Everything else though is great. One of the other crew mentioned that as a chart plotter it's easier to use than the Raymarine! And it is.

We're all growing to love the remote control of the Raymarine with the iPad, because amongst other things the touch screen of the iPad is significantly better than that of the E-series chartplotter, so it's actually quicker and easier to use the remote than the actual device.

The grib files on PocketGrib have been pretty accurate for the main part, but with gusting way, way higher, but I guess that's Atlantic weather for you. This is my first time not sailing in the Med, and to be honest the jury is still out on whether I like Ocean sailing compared to the Med.

DAY 5: The grib says we will wind will turn southerly, which means that we would be beating into the wind and waves on the engines, not the great downwind or broad reach sailing we have had so far. So there are long discussions about the alternatives. Final decision is to hold up in Sines for 27 hours when the wind will have moved back to the west and we can broad reach down the rest of Portugal and sail downwind to Gibraltar.

Sines is a wonderful little marina, makes you realise what Larnaca has to live up to... and fail. It's amazingly well protected, for the final few hours into the marina we were beating into the wind with wind speeds showing in excess of 45 knots and speeds (SOG) of up to 12/13 knots. That's pretty much roller coaster sailing. I'll try and see if I can upload some of the footage of this onto YouTube. I didn't get the fastest speeds filmed. The Lagoon 450 is a very sea friendly boat, you don't get the hull slapping you do on the Lagoon 560.

So here we are sitting and catching up, looking forward to a meal ashore this evening and watching the flag gently waving in the breeze, the rain falling, and the wind gauge... which on our mast is well above the harbour wall showing 30s and 40s. Yes, I'm very glad we're taking a break. The hot shower was wonderful. We do have hot showers on board, and that is good, but with onboard showers you .always have to be careful of water usage.

Entering Sines on Jasmine City.

This gives you a little impression of what it was like coming into Sines and why we decided to take a break for a day. At times it was significantly more confused seas than the video shows.

Leaving Les Sables d'Olonne

Leaving Les Sables d'Olonne, famous for the Vandée Globe

Bisher accepting Jasmine City from Olivier of Lagoon

Jasmine City from the bow. The boom was fitted yesterday.

Stern view of Jasmine City

Delivery and sea trials for Jasmine City

This is the track for Jasmine City, which is owned by by a friend of ours called Bisher. It's a brand new Lagoon 450. Tim and I have been graciously allowed to help in the sea trials and delivery from Les Sables to Morocco.

Les Sables d'Olonne is a famous marina where the Vendée Globe starts from. The Vendée Globe is a round the world single handed yacht race... 'without assistance'.  

Short sail with friends

Short sail this morning with Andrew, who helped with the galley, his son Perry, Andrew's brother George and his girlfriend Maria. Oh, it's so nice to have a silent motor!

Another test sail...

Just a quick 75 minute trip out round the bay to test the new batteries/motor. Everything worked fine again. Having fitted the auto-pump-changeover for the salt water cooling pumps it was great not having to remember to change them manually!

It was very relaxing and showed how it should be on an electric drive: Easy!

New batteries working

We connected up the final two wires on the new batteries this morning and then went out for a test with two friends Steve and David. Fantastic. That's all I can say. We motored in and out of the marina. Motored for about half an hour, motor sailed for two hours and the battery indicator showed we had only used 10% of the capacity!

Yesterday I finished some of the software for the pump system so after lunch we fitted the pump control system... which also worked.

In about a weeks time we will be travelling to France to deliver a new catamaran for a friend and picking up the contactors and extra components to finish the battery installation. Then we sail... through the summer!

Wiring batteries... not complete

We spent the weekend planning and wiring the new batteries in place. Not exciting, but necessary in the next step for getting the electric drive fully functional.

The EU and USA have both produced new regulations for electric drives in boats, and part of those regulations are associated with the safe connection of the batteries. I'm not going to go into the regulations, but what you see is the cable for connecting between batteries - the diameter is approximately 13mm and pretty difficult to bend. Because it's marine cable the copper strands are all tinned. Because of the voltage the cable is double insulated and fireproof.

The cable that connects the batteries to the buss bars that connect the motor are even more complex, with armoured screening too...

The galley/kitchen is finally complete

The galley/kitchen is finally complete. I'll take some high quality photos to show it off and compare with the old one and the predicted design, but this is a quick snap on the iPhone to show it in place. Last weekend was the final install and commission.

New work surfaces

Over the weekend we had gone to IKEA to buy the worksurfaces and I took a day off for another master class with Andrew. The depth we needed was greater than the wood from IKEA so we used two pieces and routed a groove and then used 'biscuits' and glue to fix together. To make sure it's really solid I then routed out for metal joining pieces to hold together.

We'd decided on a round stainless steel sink undermounted to show off the wooden work surface. We'd then have a 'plug' which would cover the sink and become the chopping board on the work surface so we didn't damage it. Andrew suggested we start with the plug. Drew the circle and then rough cut with a jig saw.

We then mounted the router on a piece of wood and screwed it to the centre of the plug and slowly routed it down evenly. The router only went to half depth so we then turned it over and used a different sort of bit that followed the already routed part. This meant we didn't have a screw hole in the top!

Then we went back to the main worksurface, drilled the router/wood in place and routed a circle, sized up so the plug should fit. We only routed down about 12mm and then used the jigsaw again to rough cut. Finally used the bit that followed the routed circle to make it perfect.

We wanted a draining board and a little design so we changed to a rounded channel router bit and routed out a 220 degree circle. But... of course you want the water to drain into the sink. So, we made a slope with some offcuts, mounted the router so it would follow the edge and routed the channel down to the sink! Brilliant... a real master class from Andrew.

Planning the new galley

Tim and I met with Andrew on King Malu to plan the new galley.

We'd already made cardboard templates and now wanted to discuss ideas with him. One of the things Tim and I spend a lot of time on is thinking and planning - Tim often says 75% of a job is the planning. Maybe not it time, but in effort.

Before we started ripping it out the work surfaces were small tile. I'm sure they looked spectacular when they were first installed but the grouting between the tiles collected dirt and it didn't really work. The metal fiddle strips around the work surfaces also looked utilitarian and not really very classic.

We had previously been thinking of a stainless steel work surface and sink, and it could look very good. But King Malu is a classic boat with a lot of teak and so we then discussed the idea of a light wood worktop, probably birch or beach which would be in keeping but contrast nicely with the darker teak.

So I photoshopped what it would look like:

This is oiled beach so we decided to go for the lighter still birch. Not decided on the finish yet...

A breath of fresh air

Tim and I had been doing a lot of work on King Malu and working hard so we decided now that we had re-balanced the boat with the new batteries we MUST sail. So we went out for a quick blow round the bay.

New tools

Since our first master class lesson in woodworking with Andrew we decided we needed more tools so went off to Nicosia and ended up with a router and a saw. We're very glad we now have a good sized workshop.

I suppose if you saw the last post about Andrew's power tools this was logical!

Upgrading our woodworking skills

In fixing the new batteries in the stern cabin we had to raise the seat by about 6cm for them to fit underneath. What we really needed was an S shaped piece of wood that looked in keeping (ie teak) with the rest of the boat.

Through cycling Tim met a guy called Andrew who turns out to be an expert woodworker. He offered to help. So we did the basics - laminated pieces of oak into the basic shape and then cut them to the basic outline. We then took that round to Andrew.

Every few minutes an extra power tool was taken out of his shed... routers, sanders, jig saws, planers. I learnt a lot and the finished piece is fantastic!

I'll upload a photo later of the cabin and the batteries and the new seat, but to whet your appetite here are a couple of photos of a guitar Andrew made.

iSailor Navigation

Mid-February and leisure sailors are all thinking about the new sailing season and hoping for better weather. In Cyprus we have had our share of storms, but nothing like the UK and North America. This blog entry is not about what we've been doing over the winter, but a review of a cool piece of kit that you might want to get for the new season... iSailor.

I spent a lot of time looking for charting apps on my iPad, downloading and testing. Although I've never developed apps for iPad, I have developed software for other platforms and I'm specifically involved in the user interface design for software, so I'm very fussy and demand a good user interface. Some years ago I wrote the algorithm to convert the US military Digital Chart of the World (DCW) to something user friendly for a commercial GIS company so I'm also pretty fussy about my charting.

Secondly, I want it to be relatively cheap. By that I mean, I'm not looking for free, but as the Americans like to put it, good 'bang for the buck'. I tried out a number of apps and eventually settled on iSailor. You install it through the normal Apple App Store. The software is free, so you can try before you buy, but the charts have to be bought as 'in App purchases', in other words you can select what charts you want within iSailor when you want them. The price of each chart or folio is reasonable - about 17 GBP which is just over 20 EUR. Chart updates, which also happen online, are free.

I was specifically wanting this system as Tim and I were making a delivery of a Lagoon 56 catamaran from Mykonos, in the Aegean, to Cyprus last August. Although we had a full and integrated dual screen/station Raymarine chartplotter, I wanted to use the iPad for navigation to see how it fared. This, then, is the story of how we used it! I should add that these screen-shots are from the previous version of iSailor. Since then they have upgraded it, and it's an even better product. For this trip we needed two chart folios - Mediterranean Sea, Eastern Part and Aegean Sea - Dardanelles - Bosphorus.

Flying over to Mykonos on the plane, I turned the iPad to aeroplane mode and Tim and I could sit there at 30,000 feet looking at various route options for the trip.

I had set the 'Average boat speed' for the Lagoon in the settings, so iSailor was telling us the various predicted times for the different routes. At that stage our thinking was to get to Rhodes as fast as we could, then on to Kastelorizo and finally to Larnaca.

When we got to the boat we then chatted with the skipper as to what his thoughts were. He'd been at Mykonos for most of the summer, so he wanted to move... now! So where to? We plotted a day sailing south, and then overnight somewhere protected from the northerly wind: Koufonisi Island.

The trip itself is described in other posts on this blog, so I'm not going to rehash that.

I left iSailor recording all the tracks for the sail. Mostly it sat on a shelf in the saloon, and picked up GPS from there with no problems. It was always covered by the roof of the Lagoon, which is fairly substantial as it is also the floor to the flybridge above. There are windows just in front of the shelf and I didn't try a lot of different locations... except I did always take it to my cabin overnight, covered by the main deck of the Lagoon, and it worked there too. 

You can set an anchor alarm, so it's comforting know you're not dragging overnight, especially in a crowded anchorage. 

As I said, I left iSailor making a track for each leg. It's useful to be able to add annotations to the charts too... well, maybe annotating the location of Tim's 'once in a lifetime' tuna catch is a bit much, but you get the idea!

You can see from the track where we had to keep changing course to 'play the fish' till it tired and was brought on board.

Sitting there at the dining table on the stern deck, with the sun setting over the Aegean, it was easy to see the track where we'd been and plan the options for the route for the following day. Primary objective was to find sheltered mooring from the northerly winds down the Aegean sea.

The second leg to Astypalaia was uneventful and so planning for the leg to Rhodes gave us two options: To Simi and then to Rhodes or straight through to Rhodes. iSailor made it easy see the options, although you can only display one route at a time. It would be cool to be able to see multiple alternative routes in different colours to make comparisons. 

From Rhodes we decided to do a single leg all the way back to Larnaca. The detail shown on the charts is appropriate to the scale, so on that leg it was more like a regular route planning chart.

The predicted sailing time for this leg is 2 days and two nights, so we divided the crew into watches.

Tim and I are both RYA Skippers and so although there was a professional skipper on board I really like to know where we are and what is happening even when off watch in the cabin. I really liked the ability to wake in the night and look at where we are and the speed we're doing. We didn't have the WiFi link to the Raymarine, so I couldn't see AIS targets or other navionic information. Olivier, the professional skipper, was quite envious and said he really missed knowing what was going on in his cabin overnight! 

I ended up with night watch while we passed Paphos. iSailor has both day and night settings like most chartplotters, so as not to ruin your night sight. I used the radar and AIS on the Raymarine more than iSailor as there is quite a lot of shipping around the Cyprus, and some of it behaves very strangely.

These are vector charts, so clicking on a detail (like a buoy with a light on the military firing zone south of Akrotiri) will bring up detail about the flash rate of the light. Though, there was nothing annotated about the fact it's a firing/exclusion zone. I knew that already, I'd had a run in with the military some years ago sailing through it!

I suppose as well as annotating our own charts it might be useful to have 'information to share with other sailors' that could be sent back to the chart supplier next time the iPad is connected to the Internet. My iPhone SatNav App for the car does that - you can tell the map supplier of inaccuracies in the mapping while you're driving, or at least your passenger can!

Coming in to Larnaca you can see the detail and accuracy of the chart plotting. We moored in the visitors area - you can even see where we turned and backed in to the mooring.

I don't normally set a waypoint that close to a marina/port but between half and one mile off shore. A yachtsman crashed his boat into the marina at Limassol by setting his waypoint at the marina and then falling asleep at the wrong moment! iSailor wasn't driving the autopilot so it didn't matter.

All in all iSailor passed the voyage with flying colours. It's not my primary charting system, which is Raymarine integrated into the autopilot on both our yacht and the Lagoon, but it's both an excellent backup and a supplementary tool I would now not be without. The professional skipper was using charting software on his laptop. iSailor was both simpler to use and more powerful.

This is our dinghy sailing ground - just north of the commercial port of Larnaca. It's also where we sometimes take the yacht for a quick coffee, protected by the port breakwater. I'd be very surprised if all the buoys are correctly positioned, but since amongst the buoys there are black floating pipes in the water at times, anything is likely to be an approximation.

I should add that although the exclusion zone was missing on the chart, iSailor has a clear liability warning 'All displayed charts must be used in conjunction with a recognized nautical paper chart of a scale appropriate to the area being navigated'. We keep paper charts on our yacht. We bring them out to keep ourselves up to date with paper navigation, but we generally now do electronic navigation and I didn't see one paper chart on the whole voyage from Mykonos to Larnaca.

iSailor happily exports data in formats usable by other programs - so on the blog entries for the voyage I loaded the track data into Google maps for displaying on the blog allowing visitors to zoom into the track and see exactly where we went.

On this version using the ERBL (Electronic Range and Bearing Line) was difficult and a bit clunky, so I never used it. The new interface is great and the ERBL very much easier to use. I'll let you download the free app to see it though!

Winter work

So... what have we been doing over the winter? Mostly renovating a new workshop for Malu Marine, which will really help with future work on King Malu. And... getting ready for new battery bank for the electric drive.

Since the latest version of the electric drive is now doing all it should and we're really pleased with it, it is now time to upgrade the rest of the system. The first job is the batteries. We have ordered 16 Exide propulsion batteries, which should be with us by the end of February at the latest.

But where to put them. We made cardboard cutouts to check sizing and have been round the boat trying different locations. It's also important to maintain the balance and trim on King Malu, so we cannot suddenly place 500kg of lead on one side of the boat. We do have a significant number of lead 'pigs' to remove or move to adjust the balance and trim so it's quite a complex plan. We also have 8 of the old 12v batteries on the port side we will be removing.

The first two options we looked at were (1) batteries under the seats in the saloon (2) batteries port, centre and under the galley. I didn't like #1 because it moved the weight too far forward for my liking and made the cable runs long and more significantly made the battery banks complex to manage.

When I say complex to manage I mean that there is a legal requirement in USA and EU that battery banks should be isolated both positive and negative since the high voltage propulsion bank must not be connected to ships earth (called an IT system). And they also must be isolatable into 48v battery banks for maintenance. So, taking sixteen 6v batteries and making them into banks of 4, 6 & 6 might work well in balance/trim but would then make a headache for isolating as the isolator would be mid-bank.

It looked like port, centre and galley was the best option so we removed the old galley, allowing us to measure more carefully and renovate the galley at the same time.

Having done so we were less than sure the batteries would now fit! Time to put thinking caps on.