Damage to King Malu

Today my son was travelling to the UK so I picked him up to bring him from his flat to our home before taking him to the airport. I drive slowly, very slowly because I was not feeling well. He promptly banned me from taking him to the airport and we phoned a friend to take him instead. I lay down on the couch with a blanket. It was a kind of flu bug that made me feel lacking any energy and just plain unwell.

The phone rang. I didn't want it to. I just wanted to sleep to be honest. It was a friend from the marina who rang to tell me that King Malu had broken free of her mooring and was banging herself on the piling between us and the next berth. I phone Tim, but he's in Nicosia and cannot get to Larnaka for a while. I have to go to the marina and try to sort it out. Most of the family say 'you cannot go, you're ill' but Daniel, my older son, says 'Dad's running on adrenalin now, he'll be OK'.

I got another friend to pick me up and take me down there as I really wouldn't trust myself driving. King Malu is free from the mooring... in fact about 4 metres of the jetty had broken free and she was alongside another boat beating herself to death on a steel mooring. All the mooring lines you connect, and we had connected 4, are useless if all three cleats on the jetty are no longer attached to the jetty!

I asked a friend from the marina to help, as I'm still feeling washed out, but eventually had jump onto a neighbour's boat and then jump from that to King Malu to try to sort out some very long lines and pull her back to the jetty.  She's OK, but the port side is really messed up and will need repair to the gell coat and a complete painting of the hull. This will be the first time the hull is painted as the original manufacturers gell coat has lasted all these years. Sad really.

Amazing what you can do when you're ill, but running on adrenalin!

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?