Sunday, March 8, 2015
Helm Chair Installed
Our new helm chair is installed (and the old Captain's Plank removed). This link will take you to the full story (Helm Chair ).
Friday, March 6, 2015
Batteries and The Boat Dog
Jarvis our dog apparently got tired of waiting for me to get his story written. Please go to the learnings section and you can read his version of life on the boat.
While the NorthEast is having record snowfall, here we are enjoying an early spring after one of the warmest winters on record. We may get up to see the daffodil and tulip fields this weekend long before they are due to bloom for the annual tulip festival. We did go back and visit our Daughter, Son in Law and Grandkids in Ontario and were delighted (well Et our grandson we took from Portland and I anyway, Clarice was a bit less enthusiastic) to experience a Midwest winter for a few days complete with a tour of a maple syrup forest/farm on a horse drawn sleigh through the falling snow.
To take advantage of the lovely weather we took Salish Aire on a 3 day run over the weekend and circumnavigated Whidbey Island. Our moorage costs were zero as we were able to use yacht club reciprocal privileges (there isn't a lot of competition for the slips this time of year) and our diesel furnace for heat so we didn't need shore power.
Having conquered the furnace gremlins, I have decided to take on getting an understanding of our DC systems. Salish Aire came to us with solar panels, 2 heavy duty charger/inverters, and 2 heavy battery banks along with a plethora of instrumentation. Being a true "I want to understand it so I can fix it person", it has been hard to ignore the system but I wanted to be able to focus without excessive distractions when I took on this task. Since the system seems to function to the level of our present needs, we agreed to just accept that the black boxes are working up to now.
The first step has involved reading manuals then running down and looking at the equipment and then back to the manuals to make sure I have understood what I have read and know what it applies to. Currently I'm trying to isolate the forward inverter and battery bank until I can understand them fully and make sure that the batteries are not beyond their natural life. The front bank consists of a pair of 12 V Rolls brand batteries. They are huge, industrial, and highly rated but don't seem to be accepting a full charge. The first step in wet-cell batteryology in confirming the status in this case is to desulfate the batteries by charging them to a much higher voltage than normal - the goal of this is to drive the hardened sulfates from the surface of the lead plates and back into solution so that the lead under the surface is able to participate in the electricity making reactions. We hope to run this process over the weekend.
Our other excitement is that our helm chair is finished and our son is bringing it up from Portland tonight - more on that later.
While the NorthEast is having record snowfall, here we are enjoying an early spring after one of the warmest winters on record. We may get up to see the daffodil and tulip fields this weekend long before they are due to bloom for the annual tulip festival. We did go back and visit our Daughter, Son in Law and Grandkids in Ontario and were delighted (well Et our grandson we took from Portland and I anyway, Clarice was a bit less enthusiastic) to experience a Midwest winter for a few days complete with a tour of a maple syrup forest/farm on a horse drawn sleigh through the falling snow.
To take advantage of the lovely weather we took Salish Aire on a 3 day run over the weekend and circumnavigated Whidbey Island. Our moorage costs were zero as we were able to use yacht club reciprocal privileges (there isn't a lot of competition for the slips this time of year) and our diesel furnace for heat so we didn't need shore power.
Having conquered the furnace gremlins, I have decided to take on getting an understanding of our DC systems. Salish Aire came to us with solar panels, 2 heavy duty charger/inverters, and 2 heavy battery banks along with a plethora of instrumentation. Being a true "I want to understand it so I can fix it person", it has been hard to ignore the system but I wanted to be able to focus without excessive distractions when I took on this task. Since the system seems to function to the level of our present needs, we agreed to just accept that the black boxes are working up to now.
The first step has involved reading manuals then running down and looking at the equipment and then back to the manuals to make sure I have understood what I have read and know what it applies to. Currently I'm trying to isolate the forward inverter and battery bank until I can understand them fully and make sure that the batteries are not beyond their natural life. The front bank consists of a pair of 12 V Rolls brand batteries. They are huge, industrial, and highly rated but don't seem to be accepting a full charge. The first step in wet-cell batteryology in confirming the status in this case is to desulfate the batteries by charging them to a much higher voltage than normal - the goal of this is to drive the hardened sulfates from the surface of the lead plates and back into solution so that the lead under the surface is able to participate in the electricity making reactions. We hope to run this process over the weekend.
Our other excitement is that our helm chair is finished and our son is bringing it up from Portland tonight - more on that later.
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