After a calm day yesterday I took the time to do some near-time planning, specifically deciding what I want to do about the electrical system. I will most definitely rewire the boat at some point, probably sooner than later. Maybe it’s because I feel most comfortable with electrics rather than fixing the small blemishes that is one of the reasons Away isn’t in the water yet.
Yes, I’m procrastinating, but I’m quite efficient at it at least. I have had an email conversation with a supplier of Vicron products this week, regarding primarily upgrading my charger to a charger/inverter combo, but also an isolationtransformer that has two uses, mainly to make sure that the boat when connected to shore power is electrially isolated to avoid any electrolysis that can eat away any metal that is in the water, more specifically the propeller and shaft. Something that is a bigger issue that one can suspect sometimes. It all comes down to how well the marinas are maintained. The other use is that I can now transform 110/120v to 230v wherever I connect to shore power, which means that I don’t have to worry about a countrys power system. Which is nice. All I have to have now is a bunch of plugs and converters so that I got the right one to plug in.
The inverter part of the charger will make 230v appliances work even when I’m not connected to shore by using the batteries instead and it will also keep a maximum power draw if I set one to make sure that I won’t trip any breakers on shore when connected. Another nice feature is that it can even boost the shore power, using the batteries as an extra reserve if Away use more power than the land line can supply, at least for a while. So it seems as if the power management will be simplified in the future.
I’m also looking at changing the batteries to lithium, but I think I’ll wait with that until I have my solar panels up and running. That is a totally different future story, but I will get back to that when the time is right.
Anyway, I’ve been having this mail conversation as I mentioned. I was trying to find a supplier here in Ireland and searched the web for one. It happens to be a distributor that normally doesn’t sell to end customers, but in this case the seem to do an exception. The reason why I even is having that conversation is that I found their homepage and they had a shop, but no prices. Which was a bit frustrating, so I sent them an email asked for a quote on the isolationtransformer. They replied that they don’t sell to end users, but was willing to sell to me for some reason. I’m not going to argue with them. I looked up all the things that I needed and sent them a list and I got prices that was below what I could find in Sweden, so why not? I made an offer on the whole package, added three solar chargers for when I have my panels, a controller to keep track of everything and a battery monitor. We’ll see what they say, it can be exciting times coming!
I managed to put an hour into making a electric schematic of the boat as well, I’m not done yet, but I have written everything down in a notebook that I have and is slowly transferring it to the computer. The first part should be done by tomorrow and if it is I will post it here so that you can see how it looks.
The future..?
Okay, that was alot of tech talk, thank you for staying with me. Hopefully it will be less of it in the future and more about sailing, new destinations, people and impressions. So let’s touch my plans for the future, at least as far as I dare to guess right now.
It is a rough schedule, considering the state of everything. My plan is to stay in the boat yard until the end of May, get Away in the water and either have her on a buoy during June or in the marina here, it depends how much it will cost but also if they are open and can accept guests. During that time I will sail her on the [east/south] coast of Ireland and then I hope that July will come with positive information regarding Covid-19 and lockdowns so that I can take the jump over to continental Europe and Spain.
Make it so.