Batteries

The new batteries were in the battery compartment but not connected. I had looked all over the boat for cables to interconnect them, but found too few. There were a couple of old tired cables, two equally tired battery clips, plus two broken ones. So I bought brand new shiny ones from the car electrical store and asked about cables. Yes, they had cables, no they didn't make them up. So I thought about going to a car electrician and see if he had the tools to swage the terminals.

As I thought about this I thought back to the battery room at the BBC World Service many years ago and the thick copper strips joining the batteries. That is what I really needed for the two battery banks. But where from? I thought of Ken, my engineer friend, but that would need explaining to him and waiting for him to source the metal strip. What I needed was a copper strip approx three centimetres wide and three millimetres thick... oh well, have to think about that.

The other thing I had to do was to try and swap the 50 amp and 40 amp breakers for a single 80 amp breaker. The windlass takes a huge current and the previous owner had put two 40 amp breakers in parallel. I had not realised this when I had ordered the breakers. By preference I would like a single 80 amp breaker. So I went back to the electrical store and returned the old breakers. No, they didn't have 80 amp breakers, but what they did have was a dual pole 63 amp breaker. Ideal. I bought that. As I was turning to go I saw what I wanted: Copper lightening conductor - three centimetres wide by three millimetres thick copper strip. 'One metre, please'.

Now I have really smart looking battery banks and just need to attach terminals to the strips to allow the battery banks to be connected to the boat electrics.

Postscript: I was telling the story to a friend who is from the Shetland Isles today. He was the engineer for the airport there and engineer for a transmitter station in the Far East... I got to the point of 'What I really need is copper strip, approx three centrimetres wide and three millimetres thick...' when he interrupted with, 'What you need is lightening conductor strip'. You live and learn.

Solar cells, wiring and anti-fouling

This morning I took Neil, Paula and James to Limassol. They are returning to the UK by ship. On the way back I picked up three solar cells from David for King Malu. Two are flexible and one is on a frame. We will have to work out how to mount them.

When I got back to the boat I found Tim had completed removing all the anti-fouling. Or so he had thought... Alan, who runs a boat repair, boat sales, etc, etc company came by and told him that he really needed to remove it right back to the barrier coat. This was about the same as George the chandler had said... so... still more to do there. But looks like an easier job than removing the first thick coat. The hull and deck is really cleaning up nicely. Almost feels like by next weekend we will have turned the corner, from taking apart/stripping to putting back together.

When I arrived I did a bit more of the 12 volt wiring and put the batteries in the battery box. Couldn't wire them as there are not enough good battery terminals. Buy some more tomorrow.

Then went back for lunch with Sue. Just as I was about to leave Tim arrived and updated me on the conversation with Alan. After lunch I picked up Jacob and we went back to do some more wiring.

When we arrived Tim was washing down King Malu with the power washer. Today we had enough pressure that it worked properly... most of the time at least. The teak rubbing strip had loads of dirt come off it and the teak in the cockpit seems to come up better each time. But 'each time' the water runs so dirty you cannot believe how much stuff is in the wood!

Water got into the sail locker in the process so we left it to dry and went round to look at different biminis on other boats in the marina. We are trying to find a way to get the maximum usable bimini on King Malu so we have the absolute maximum amount of shade. So many options, its going to be difficult. We will try out with plastic piping first to work out the best way.

Then I got back to the wiring. This time the 220volt wiring. I wired in the phase reverse switch, galvanic isolator and the Stirling Power switch to the consumer unit. Turned on and... loud screech from the unit. The power was the wrong way round incoming and it showed off the phase reverse switch absolutely perfectly. Very impressive.

Well, that was a good weekend's work.

Boat electrics

Got down to King Malu by about 8:30 and started working on the wiring. Tim was already grinding away at the port side removing anti-fouling. I fitted all the MCBs and then worked out how to split the buss bars so that we have three battery 'pools', two of which are on the breaker panel.

Let me explain the logic. You don't want to have your boat unable to start the engine so its pretty normal to have a single starter battery and then a 'domestic' supply for everything else. However... now that we are heading towards electronic navigation etc, there are two areas you want to protect: Starting the engine and the navigation instruments. So we decided to get three pools of batteries, one battery for starting the engine or generator, one or two batteries for navigation instruments and two or three batteries for domestic supply.

Soon after I started Ken turned up and so I stopped for a bit to help him. He is making a new manual winch handle for if the anchor winch motor fails. We found problems with the gypsy for the winch and the winch itself, so ended up removing the whole winch motor to work on it off the boat. I went back to wiring...

Then Michael turned up, he returns to the UK tomorrow so wanted to come to see the boat. I showed him round and he took some photos... the ones you see on this blog entry.

Then Costas, the Raymarine rep, turned up. We have placed the contract with him for Raymarine navigation equipment and he came round with the depth sounder which we need to fit before we put King Malu in the water. You need a 52mm flat downward looking space on the hull to fit the sensor. We don't have that. So option 1 is to slightly shave off the side of the sensor and option 2 is to use the existing sensor. Next week he will come back with test gear to check out the existing sensor. I went back to the wiring...

Showing Michael round I realise the boat is getting pretty untidy: It really needs a good clean and tidy up. Michael leaves. I get back to the wiring...

Ken then turned his ministrations to the engine. All the belts and all the hoses need replacing and he was particularly keen to work out how to replace the timing belt. He couldn't find any of the timing marks needed for checking the timing on a replacement belt. So I looked out the Ford manual, which was absolutely covered with oil [obviously a well used book] and between us we figured out how to do the timing for the engine and also how the secondary water cooling system worked. He then turned his ministrations to the final stuck sea cock. I went back to the wiring...

So now while wiring I have grinding noises coming through the hull from Tim and banging noises coming from the sail locker from Ken. And I'm thinking 'Do I need a 10amp or 6amp breaker in this or that position...' BANG, BANG, 'Yes, I can get that to work if I move the lighting supplies three breakers up and and the blowers three breakers down...' GRRRRRRIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNND.

Suddenly no more banging, no more grinding and a yell of 'YES' from the sail locker. The final sea cock has been freed and Tim has finished all the grinding off anti-fouling for the day. So out comes grinding paste and fine glass paper to polish the sea cock and to grease it with Blakes grease. And that's it for the day. I don't get back to the wiring, but tidy and clean up the boat as Ken and Tim head off for showers.

Tomorrow I will get back to the wiring!

Two steps forward, one step back…

In fitting the new digital control for the electrics I needed to wire the instruments into the 12V supply. Easy? No.

The negative buss-bar for the 12V supply was originally glued to the hull, just above the positive. In 33 years the glue has died out and the negative buss-bar dropped to behind the positive, making it inaccessible. Chatted with Tim: create new negative buss-bar below the positive and rewire the panel. The negative buss-bar was corroded, so seems like a good idea.

I buy a triangular shaped wood length and a quarter-circle wood length, cut them to length and glue the quarter-circle to the top so that it protects the buss-bar. Cut the buss-bar to length. screw one end, screw the middle, straighten out the bend to screw the other end and it snaps!

No problem, I have another length of buss-bar. Start again. Works fine this time. I'll just try it in place before sticking it with glue. It drops off the ledge I will glue it onto into a cavity below.

No problem, I'll reach down and get it. Big problem. The cavity is deep and inaccessible. So it looks like I shall have to cut an access hole to this cavity, fit an access door in order to retrieve the buss-bar and glue in place before rewiring the negative [and positive at the same time now] in order to get power for the new digital power control systems… or… maybe a bent metal coathanger as a fishing hook.

Batteries

Early this morning [for me] I went down to the boat and did some cleaning up and measuring lengths for extra wires. While I was there Tim phoned about the places on the deck that cleaning off the old Treadmaster the wire brush had gone through the gelcoat and was showing the resin of the fibreglass. We shall have to re-gelcoat those areas.

After lunch Tim and I went looking for batteries. I am installing a Sterling Power charging and power management system on King Malu and according to Sterling Power we don't need expensive Gel batteries but need a charging system that looks after sealed wet cells well. We shall have to see.

The cost of sealed batteries here varied from 100-150 euros each approx, so going for the cheaper ones and letting the charger sort it out will save approx 200 euros on the cost of the new batteries.

Well, actually we went looking first for face masks. The face masks and safety goggles we had been using for cleaning the antifouling off the hull were not effective enough and on Saturday Tim had dust in his eyes and they stung like anything. Sunday no better, so now find total seal goggles!

New electrics

I spent the weekend working on the electrics. That has been my main role. Tim and Mark and others have worked on removing the old Treadmaster and started cleaning off the anti-fouling.

Anyway... the electrics... if I tell you the original shore power connection had a 13amp plug to 13amp plug cable to plug King Malu into the electricity you will understand why I have been starting from scratch almost. I first of all fitted a new 16amp blue male connector in the sail locker so that the mains intake is safe. I then fitted a new consumer unit with an RCD in the cabin and removed all the old MCBs.

That was mainly last Wednesday... today... I started on the 12volt and integration system: We bought almost everything from Sterling Power who seem to produce some of the best small ship power control electronics we can find in the world.

We'll see how well they work in practice.

I fitted a 2700 watt inverter, a digital charger, 12volt monitoring system and an automatic 220volt changeover system [shore power, generator or inverter].

Sunday I spent most of my time cutting holes and fitting the new controllers into the panel and trying to make it all look neat and tidy.

The photo shows the panel before I started, with all the old analogue meters. A week or so and I will post what it looks like now.

Still not finished and I hope by the end of next weekend I will have done so and can move on to something else.

Hard work begins

Well, now the hard work has begun. Some mornings last week and over the weekend Tim came down to remove the old Treadmaster from the deck.

No, this wasn't the state of the deck when we took the boat over, this is with the old Treadmaster chiseled up and not yet swept up. One thing we found was that in the sun the old Treadmaster and glue melted into a horrible sticky mess if you didn't sweep up almost immediately.

I thought removing the old Treadmaster would be a nightmare, but was just very hard work.

Mark was helping and the first job was to chisel up all the old Treadmaster. It has done well, the surface is over 20 years old, but now has to be totally removed.

Not the kind of job to be done in the height of summer!

After the Treadmaster is romoved all the old glue will have to be removed so that the new Treadmaster can be stuck down with new epoxy.

Tim tried many techniques, but the most effective was a wire brush attached to an angle grinder.

Cleaning off the old glue has revealed a few places of minor crazing on the deck which we will have to investigate.

I have replaced the shore power for the boat. Originally it had a 13A plug to 13A cable to plug in the boat, but that is distinctly dangerous, so it now has a 16A blue splashproof connector.

Been working on sea cocks too. At least two of them were seized. With some gentle persuasion Tim managed to get both free. One will need the wedge between the seacock and the hull changed.

Checked out some of the motor problems. Last weekend Ken came down and gave a thumbs up to the motor[s] and now need to derust, clean and get working.

Last weekend David came over about the solar power for the boat, bringing the regulator and forgetting the solar cells... oh well... will collect from Limassol sometime.

This Saturday the Raymarine guy came over and quoted for new navonics for the boat.

Well, that sort of brings us up to date, and will try to update more regularly.