Equipment – Page 2

Elektrizität

Hätte mir jemand vor einem Jahr erzählt, dass Elektrizität spannend und interessant ist!!! da hätte ich ihn ausgelacht und jetzt schreib ich sogar einen Blog darüber.

Alle Elektrizität die uns an Bord zu Verfügung steht, wird aus Wind, Sonne oder Wasser gewonnen – außer wenn der Motor läuft, der lädt die Batterien ebenfalls. Als wir in Ardfern gestartet sind, hatten wir eine kleine Solarpanele und einen älteren Windgenerator, in England bei Neills Schwester haben wir dann zwei neue 80 Watt Solarpanelen und einen neuen Windgenerator gekauft, der über ein Steuergerät mit den Batterien verbunden ist und jetzt kannst du genau sehen, wieviel Ampere die Sonne und der Wind produzieren. Ich bin regelrecht zu einem “Srom Junkie” geworden, denn oft sitzt ich da und bin einfach neugierig, was gerade passiert, dann geh ich runter und schau auf die Anzeige. Ihr könnt euch kaum vorstellen, wieviel Unterschied es macht, wenn du die Solarpanele immer nach der Sonne ausrichtest, plötzlich springt die Anzeige von 3 oder 4 Amp. Leistung auf 6 oder 7 und das bedeutet, dass du deutlich mehr Strom produzierst und dass bedeutet wiederum, dass du sogar den Kühlschrank einschalten kannst, denn der alleine braucht schon 3 Amp, um zu kühlen. Wir haben auch einen Wassergenerator an Bord, der beim Segeln hinterm Boot hergezogen wird und den wir auch wenn wir vor Anker sind zu einem 2. Windgenerator umbauen können. Nachdem wir hier auf Aruba einen neuen Kühlschrank eingebaut haben, der natürlich viel weniger Strom benötigt haben wir uns auch noch einen Wassermacher gekauft. Mit der Energie, die wir vom Kühlschrank sparen, können wir – rechnerisch, wie es dann in Wirklichkeit aussieht werden wir sehen – zwischen 5 – 10 Liter Trinkwasser pro Tag machen. Und falls wir irgendwann all unsere bestellten Sachen bekommen und endlich nach Kolumbien weiter segeln werde ich euch mehr darüber berichten können.

Ich hab mir wirklich nie Gedanken über Strom gemacht, denn daheim wenn es dunkel ist machst du das Licht an, schaltest die Waschmaschine ein, wenn du dran denkst aber nicht wenn du genügend Energie hast – verrückt. Jetzt bin ich so alt geworden ohne jegliches Gefühl für Elektrizität und jetzt lerne ich jeden Tag neue Sichtweisen und Perspektiven kennen – ich bin neugierig, wie sich das auf mein “Stromverhalten” nach einem Leben auf dem Boot auswirkt.

Chat ein holländischer Architekt, der sich mit seiner Familie auch auf Weltumsegelungstour befindet, hat uns erzählt, dass er vor seiner Reise Niedrig Energiehäuser designt hat, doch wenn er zurück kommt, wird er Häuser planen, die Energie produzieren. Ich bin gespannt, ob es Menschen gibt, die diese Mehrkosten tatsächlich investieren um langfristig etwas für sich und die Umwelt zu tun.

Jetzt haben wir uns auch noch eine Nähmaschine gekauft um einen Sonnenschutz zu nähen und verschiedene kleine Projekte hab ich mittlerweile schon geschafft, wie z.B. eine Werkzeugrolle und einen Sonnenschutz für unseren Tiller.

Bosch power tools

“I wish I had a set of tools like Heidi and Neill!”

How often have we heard this from tradesman that we have had on board? They work on boats all day but arrive with a motley assortment of tools and when they need “something special” they need to go back to the workshop to find it. Or – they borrow ours 🙂

Before we left we bought a set of Bosch power tools and they have definitely been one of our best investments.

We charge the two 12 Volt batteries up using the excess power that we generate with wind and sun and most of the time they are plugged in to the torch and vacuum cleaner both of which get used all the time. Vacuuming up dirt is so much better than redistributing it with a brush and a good torch is vital for looking in to the dark corners or searching for Artemis in the night with the dinghy.

We also have two drills, one of which can also be used as a power screw driver, and a reciprocating tool which we can use to saw woods, plastics or metal and use as a sander. Very useful when maintaining a boat with so much wood work.

After sixteen months of use, the power tools are still paying for themselves every day and hopefully will continue to impress tradesman all over the world.

We have entered the American Zone.

We are not in the USA but close enough that the locals here in Aruba have definitely been infected. Finally we have reached the part of the world that doesn’t do metric and prefers to fight with the mathematical chaos that they call U.S. customary units.

Yesterday we broke our two millimeter drill so tried to buy a new one at the hardware store. They didn’t have any but, after finding their conversion table, they told us what we really needed was a 5/64 inch bit. The mathematics behind that conversion is 5 / 64 inch x 25.4 mm / inch = 1.984 mm – which is close enough.

And if you were thinking a 4mm drill would be 10/64 inch then you would be wrong as it is 5/32 inch and of course a 3mm is an 1/8 inch – although it isn’t really as an 1/8 inch is 3.175 mm. My head hurts.

And now we have a pump with a 3/8 FPT thread on the input – which we need to convert to a 1/2 inch tube – and a 3/8 OD output which we can connect some tube to. We thought Google could help with all this and received the answer

Tube is measured by outside diameter, pipe is measured by inside diameter. There is often confusion as to which size die the customer actually needs – Pipe Size or Tubing Size. Keep in mind that pipe size refers to a nominal – not actual – insidepipe diameter.

Luckily they sell rum relatively cheaply on the island

New fridge

Our Rustler had a fridge in the galley (sailor speak for kitchen area). It was a quarter of a century old, badly insulated and didn’t regulate properly. It was slowly rotting the surrounding woodwork and sometimes stopped cooling but still took 60 Watts from the batteries. We decided it had to go.

We ordered a Vitrifrigo TL20 top loading fridge. The manufacturer ignored our emails and the USA dealer quoted three months delivery so we ordered it via Ocean Chandlery. It has a capacity of 20 liters which is plenty for us. The technical data claims it is category A+++ and uses only 28 Watts of power.

Unfortunately Rustlers are hand built boats so nothing is easy. The work top was glued to the cupboards below and ran under the cupboards above. It had to be cut in to little squares before being hacked off. The fridge was also jammed in and held in with liters of insulating foam. Both fridge basin and foam had to be cut out in tiny blocks. New saw blades were needed which involved an 18 km bike ride to the tool shop.

We needed a new work top and Heidi had the brilliant idea of making one from wood stained white and then sealed with epoxy. Not only did she have the idea, she also made it happen – despite the ambient temperature being 15°C above the recommended temperature for working epoxy. The new top looks better than the old one and is more functional and has a fridge fitted and working.

The fridge has now been working for a week and works as hoped. The only “problem” is that it appears to take 36 Watts rather than the advertised 28 Watts. That is a major difference when you are running an autark system as we do.

Anchoring – a complete overhaul

When we bought Artemis, we changed to a Rocna anchor and it has been doing a fantastic job of holding the boat each night – the statistics are here.

But there is more to anchoring than just the anchor. There is:

the anchor
the chain
the anchor winch with it’s gearbox and motor
the switch that you press to work the motor

The all important switch rusted and fell apart in Grenada but we managed to clean it up and put it together so that it worked (mostly) until friends brought a new one to the Grenadines. The new one fitted perfectly after we modified it a bit.

Eine neue Ankerkette

Immer noch Karibik??

Ja seit fast vier Monaten sind wir jetzt hier und die Zeit vergeht wie im Flug. Neill hat berechnet, dass wir mehr als 240 mal geankert haben und das letzte mal in einer Marina waren wir notgedrungen, als wir unseren neuen Motor in Martinique bekommen haben. Aber in letzter Zeit war die Ankerei immer mit mehr oder weniger Schwierigkeiten verbunden; die Ankerkette hat sich beim heraus lassen verklemmt und jedesmal musste Neill mir helfen sie wieder gangbar zu machen.

Hier in St. Martin haben wir ein Schwedisches Paar Wim und Elisabeth kennen gelernt als wir mit unseren neuen “Team Shirts” unterwegs waren. Als sie uns an Bord besucht haben, kam das Gespräch auf unser kleines Problem und Wim meinte, ich schau mir die Kette mal an. Als er unseren Rostklumpen sah – lachte er herzhaft und meinte, außer mit einer neuen Kette bekommt ihr niemals Ruhe und so haben wir in den sauren Apfel gebissen und eine neue Ankerkette bestellt und am Donnerstag 9.5. haben wir unser neues Team-Mitglied an Bord genommen.

Sie ist 50 Meter lang, 100 Kg schwer wunderschön galvanisiert und funkelt über den Preis machen wir keine Angaben aber wir schlafen viel viel ruhiger, wenn wir wissen dass der Anker super hält und auch die Verbindung zum Boot stabil ist. Und falls wir vielleicht in der Osterinsel oder Pitcairninseln ankern haben wir genügend Kette und noch ausreichend Seile an Bord.

“Anchor Pro” app

Last week we wrote about how often we used our Rocna anchor and relied on it. Maybe just as important is an anchor watch program or App that lets you know when the anchor is not holding.

When we anchor we set our position in the Android app “Anchor Pro” We tell it where the anchor is and how much chain we have out. It immediately starts to monitor our position relative to the anchor. If we move outside the radius we have defined, the batteries on the tablet run low or it loses GPS signal, it lets out a very loud alarm.

The app is very easy to use but loaded with clever options. Really useful is the ability to define only a segment of a circle as being “OK”. Here in the Caribbean the wind comes from the east so you can anchor “a little bit closer” to an object to your east and then input a larger radius to the west than to the east.

Also nice is that when you leave the boat with the tablet you can switch the app off and, on your return, tell it to use the old position. You can also switch on the “heatmap” view and see all the positions that have been logged. A nice tidy grouping (as shown here) suggests that you are holding well and can enjoy a run ashore.

A well set anchor, a good mattress and this app are our secrets to a good nights sleep.

Review of our Rocna Anchor

When we bought the boat we knew we were going to be spending as much time as we could at anchor. The most beautiful places in the world don’t have marinas or pontoons. Real freedom relies on a solid dependable anchor.

Before we left Scotland we installed a new 20kg Rocna anchor. Rocna recommended a 15kg anchor for our size and weight of boat but the extra 5kg is nice to have on board. The anchor is attached to the chain with a Kong connector.

In the last year we have spent 240 days at anchor. Often the pilot book has written that an anchorage has bad holding or that the anchor may need to be set a few times. Once – in Spain – we had problems setting the anchor because the bottom was a mass of weed. And only once it has not held when set and that was very strange. We anchored in Friendship Bay, Bequia and the anchor held perfectly all night. The next morning we started to drift and didn’t stop. Unfortunately we didn’t dive on the anchor when we set it to check if it was really set and in to what. We just pulled back and checked the chain tensioned.

So the numbers are:
– set 239 times from 240
– held 239 times from 240

In Spain, in a thunderstorm we once had 30 knot winds blowing us in all directions. We only had 20 meters of chain out as we were in a protected fishing port and the weather forecast was 5 knot winds from the west. We were being blown in circles and the anchor held us through it all. As you can see on the anchor watch, we swung within a 30 meter radius and the tablet was in the middle of the boat so the anchor was turning over and resetting within about five meters. Impressive!

anchor watch after the Spanish thunderstorm

Having watched a lot of people anchoring over the last year, it is obvious that a lot of badly set anchors are more a “crew problem” than an “anchor problem”. We regularly see big white charter catamarans sail to a point, stop and dump twenty or thirty meters of chain on top of their anchor. I am not sure that even a Rocna would help much if set in this way.

Marking the dinghy

Our insurance policy states that our dinghy needs to have an “identifiable mark”. When we bought the boat, the dinghy already had “Artemis” written on it in three places so Heidi brushed up the lettering a bit and we sent a photo to the insurance.

Here in the Caribbean everyone says “always lock your dinghy up!” and “don’t write the boats name on the dinghy!” The logic being that when your dinghy is on the beach, the bad guys know your boat is empty. We explained this to the insurers who agreed and said they would never mark the dinghy with the boats name (?)

Even the police lock up their boats in Martinique

Half a day with Acetone and Heidi’s work had been destroyed. Now we had a naked dinghy and needed an “identifiable mark” that had nothing to do with the boat but clearly said “It’s ours!” Sounded a bit contradictory.

Our solution is a generic email address that is now “permanently” marked on the dinghy and which passes any mails received on to both our email accounts. In addition, any one who writes to us on this address gets an autoreply with a thank you and our mobile phone numbers. The address has nothing to do with the boat or us so the potential thieves can spend an enjoyable evening looking for a fictive boat called “Soseies”. Hopefully if the dinghy is stolen and discarded some one will contact us. If not, at least we have complied with the insurance policy.

Amazing what good solutions we can work out when we have so much time to think about the problem. And thank you Gremmel lending us the generic address.

A new motor for Artemis

Those of you who follow our adventures may have noticed that, even though we own a sailing boat, our engine is a recurring theme. (repairs, a working engine, a hole in the water) We really try hard not to use the engine and are quite successful in keeping down the engine hours but when you need the engine you need it now. We have bad memories of drifting off Mallaig or Rhum with a none functioning engine and don’t want to try that again off a coral reef.

Since Gran Canaria the engine has been overheating after exhaust gases push the coolant out. Two guys in Tenerife looked at it but didn’t really have much idea so disconnected the fresh water heater.

In Martinique we went straight to Mecanique Plaisance because every one says they are “the people”. The technician came out to us at anchor and ran a few tests before declaring the heat exchanger (salt water to fresh water) dead. It was leaking internally so exhaust gases were pressurizing the fresh water coolant.

The engine is a three cylinder Yanmar (3HM35F) and as old as the boat (1992) which means spares are about as plentiful as rocking horse droppings, something else will be going wrong soon and it leaks a bit of everything all the time. We accepted the technicians opinion that a new engine made more sense.

They had a suitable engine with gearbox (3YM30AE) in the shop and Christoph (the technician) had time on Thursday and Friday so we agreed to be on the dock at 08:30 on Thursday for him to start.

Obviously every one was working on shipyard time so “08:30” was late morning, “an hour” was half a day and “finished on Friday” meant Saturday but whatever. The work looks professional and the motor works. And we don’t actually have any appointments the next few years.

The new motor is also a Yanmar. It is tiny compared to the old one, feels a bit more powerful and looks much much less rusty. It also has a three year manufacturers warranty and spare parts available worldwide. Sounds like fun.