Short sail forecast wrong... And right!

Yesterday we decided on a sail today. The forecast was for light winds and sunshine. Erika checked a different forecast and predicted rain. Sadly she was right and we were wrong! Still it allowed us to put water under the keel as they say!

This is what it was like after we came in!

Battery systems

We had 4 battery banks on King Malu: Domestic, Engine Start, Navionics and Bow Thruster. We started the transition to the new distributed system today... The engine start is no longer needed (we have a totally electric drive system now) so we added it to the domestic bank. We have the Silentwind generator with 300W solar working now, so we would like to charge both Navionics and Domestic and Bow Thruster. So what we did was to merge (temporarily) the Navionics and Domestic and then use a Sterling Battery Maintainer to top up the Bow Thruster battery bank.

This is not the final solution, as I hinted at in the beginning we aim to have a distributed battery system. More of that later. Watch this space as they say!

Silentwind

We upgraded our Silentwind generator on King Malu this weekend to the new boost version. The boost version delivers more power at lower wind speeds, which is particularly useful in the Mediterranean where we have more sun and less wind. The upgrade involves two parts: a new generator assembly and a new charge controller.

Having made the change we took out King Malu today in minimal winds. 

We had Beaufort 1-2 and although we didn't get world shattering results we were seeing the wind generator delivering power. Unless your batteries were very flat that would not have happened prior to the boost controller.

The charge controller also integrates solar power and we have installed 300W in six 50W panels. A large number of small panels is better for a sailing boat because the rigging often creates a shadow on the solar panels reducing the output for that panel. All the panels that are unshaded should still deliver full output. Note... remember you need Schottky diodes for each bank or you'll damage the panels that are shaded. 

We have added a stainless steel frame to the back of the boat, made for us by Technometalliki  in Larnaca. This enabled us to mount two 50W solar panels on the stern plus a Webcatcher Antenna.

We are working on some new solar panels for marine use based on an affordable array of small panels to get over the shading problems. We will also be supplying small marine panel combiner boxes using Schottky diodes. Watch this blog for more information.

We have also been doing tests on the Webcatcher Antennas in Larnaca marina. We provide an free access point there in partnership with Cablenet Business.

Webcatcher has three different antenna versions: 8.5 dBi, 10 dBi and 12.5 dBi. The 8.5 dBi works best in a marina close to a high Access Point, but has a more limited range. The 12.5 dBi works best long range but is more limited if you are close to the Access Point on the second story or higher of a building.

Mooring King Malu

I know I haven't written for a long while. I have been too busy. A lot of this is to do with Malu Marine. Indeed this is sort of about Malu Marine. We have fitted a webcam to a mast above the Resource Centre we how have at the Marina. This records all the goings on of the marina. You can see a live webcam still every 60 seconds on the website too.

Anyhow, this is a recording from the webcam of us mooring after sailing for the morning. Unless the wind is very low we now always moor into the wind. This allows better control of the boat.

Broken shackle

We were washing down King Malu today and I happened to notice that the anchor chain was not connected to the anchor. On further investigation I found that the shackle holding the anchor to the chain had broken. We were very thankful that we had not lost the anchor or worse... the boat.

You can see how the shackle was suffering from metal fatigue, but it was not obvious because the area of fatigue was hidden by the swivel joint to the chain. This will become something for our annual inspection in the future.

Konnos Bay for the weekend... not

We decided to have a weekend at Konnos bay. Wind should have been 15 knots steady for the sail out. But it wasn't. It was 4-10 knots. So we motor sailed most of the way to Cape Pyla... we call this mode 'snudge' it uses very little electricity (5-10Amps, which means we have 18-24 hours on the batteries to do this) and is almost silent. Some of our nefarious friends suggest it would be great for assisting during races. What it does is to take the prop drag away totally and just move a little more water under the hull. It gives another 0.5-1 knot of speed.

The wind gauge kept playing up and then the compass direction. Most annoying. I even tore off a small piece of light sailcloth to revert to the old fashioned way of telling wind direction.

The chart plotter was really weird. We would suddenly appear to be heading in a totally different direction. We reset the navionics twice. It was not funny. That is till we realised why...

We had added a swimming platform. With the swimming platform went a boarding ladder. And we found a great place to stow it beside the mast in the saloon.

It was neat and tidy and out of the way.

And made of stainless steel.

And right beside the electronic compass!

Anyway... moved that and the chartplotter and wind gauge behaved again.

Wind dropped more. We want to get to Konnos tonight so we started the generator (the motor is hybrid, using generator if we want to use the motor for a long time of motoring). Great. Till the generator died. OK, so try this then... your diesel motor dies and you are 10 miles from the marina or a mooring and the wind has dropped (4 knots) but the swell is pushing you onto the rocky shore.

But we do have the batteries. That is a little further than we would expect to motor without the generator. We didn't know exactly how much we needed for that trip. So we were very careful. But we motored all the way back to the marina.

The interesting thing was the power gauge. By the time we got back to Larnaca Marina it was dark. We have a nominal 96V system, which means that the 97.3 volts the bank had dropped to was about 57% capacity. The Curtis controller thought it was 78%, which needs re-calibrating, but nevertheless to get back with more than 50% of the battery capacity still available shows what you can do with electric drives.

Swimming Platform

The plan had been for a BBQ behind the port with Vasilli and his family. Vasilli is the owner and director of TechnoMetaliki who are the folk who do all the amazing stainless steel work we use. The photo shows the new swimming platform he made. He got to try it out for himself!

Anyway... I say the plan had been... because the wind got up and we were worried that the food would blow off the BBQ. So Tim cooked it on the Actifry at home and I brought salads. We had a great evening together.