A DIFFERENT KIND OF FISHING

>BIANKA having an electric motor for auxiliary propulsion uses various forms of wiring run to various locations on board. In fact there are a few wires left over from the old diesel days that still need to be removed or reassigned to other duties. Then there are other projects requiring new wires. Like installing a new 12 volt receptacle in the galley area. Which I need to do so I can use the Braun mixer/chopper in the galley location instead of moving it and the 200 watt inverter that powers it to some other location on the boat to use it.

Running new wires behind walls or bulkheads is called fishing. Which is not the same as dropping a line over the side in the hopes of catching dinner. But, it can use a similar type of a fiberglass pole. It has been a learning experience for me as I used the technique on various projects. Here's what I found. At first I used a rod that was made from a wire coat hanger.
It was cheap but, also had some disadvantages. You could bend it easily but, it would also stay bent and that was a problem when trying to "fish" it around sharp bends. It would sometimes get hung up. Another disadvantage was it was conductive. You run the risk of having it contact some terminal or breakthrough a wires insulating jacket causing a short circuit, fire or shock hazard. Not an ideal situation or the ideal tool to use.
I then went looking for a better solution and found it at my local Home Depot store. This was a Greenlee 540-12 Fish Stix kit.


Which consists of several 1/4" fiberglass poles that interlock and allow one to run or pull wires in tight spaces up to 12 feet. They cost about $35 bucks. It was better than poking behind bulkheads with a conductive piece of metal coat hanger wire but, still not perfect. They bent a little but, did not stay bent like the a coat hanger wire method. But, they were a little too stiff for some of bends I had to run wires through. I started thinking that I might be able to also use them for an idea I had for another project so they still might still be useful on board.
One day while looking through an online catalog. I came across the Cen-Tech wire running kit. Since they cost less then the Greenlee 540-12 Fish Stix. I bought two sets for this other project. When I got them I realized that they were the perfect tool for fishing wires on board my boat much better than using the Greenlee sticks. For one thing they were thinner than the Greenlee poles and much more flexible. As you can see in the photo below:

Another advantage of the Cen-Tech poles is they come with a flexible screw on tip.

This makes it even easier to snake the pole into tight bends and spaces. You can also get a flexible tip for the much stiffer Greenlee Fish Stix but, at extra cost. Below shows a photo of Cen-Tech pole making a tight bend behind a bulkhead before pulling a wire through.

If you've got some wires to run I recommend using something like the Cen-Tech product. They also have other uses on board. I've used them to knock out Barnacles that found their way into some of the through hulls. So if you need to do some "fishing" inside the boat this is the tool to use.

LIGHTHOUSE: Baron Bliss, Belize City

As a sailor I have an affinity for Lighthouses. They are structures whose comfort radiates outward to us sailors. So since I was staying at the Radisson Fort George Hotel in Belize City just a few minutes walk from Fort Point as the sailors call it. A visit to the Baron Bliss Lighthouse was in order.

The structure actually serves two purposes. It's a Lighthouse and a memorial to a fellow named Baron Henry Edward Ernest Victor Bliss. You can see his tomb at the base of the light off to the right in the photo below:

Bliss was an engineer by trade who made a fortune in oil futures. But, in a karmic twist of fate he became paralyzed at the age of 42. But, that did not stop Bliss from enjoying life. He moved aboard a yacht for the rest of his life and went fishing. After fishing his way through the Bahamas and Mexico. He and his yacht eventually ended up off the coast of Belize. Though he never set foot on the Belize mainland but, was still touched by the generosity of the Belize people.
When his health took a turn for the worse at age 57 he decided to donate a large part of his fortune to the people of Belize.

Bliss died soon after aboard his yacht, on March 9, 1926. The country erected this lighthouse/memorial to him and celebrate Baron Bliss Day every year in March.

WINTERLUDE 2010

Well winter is just a few weeks old but it feels like it's been around for a long time. Two feet of snow one week 8 inches the next. What's sailor to do? I don't know about you but, I'm heading south to Belize to get in some warm water sailing for the next ten days. I'll be back posting later in January.

INTERESTING PROPOSITIONS

One good thing about pulling the boat every year is that you get to inspect the hull without holding your breath or putting on Scuba gear. You can also look around the boat yard and see what other boat owners have for keels, props etc... Sometimes there are some mysteries as well. Such as what's the story behind this prop?


Did this boats owner never turn on his engine? Did he always sail off the mooring? Perhaps they never even got on the boat the whole season. Looks like they would have been in for a little surprise if they did need to use the motor considering the growth on the prop. Speaking of props I have a little mystery concerning BIANKA's prop. While polising it last spring I noticed some confusing markings on it.


From the numbers stamped on it I am assuming that it's a 16 inch diameter right handed prop. But, it appears that the original 14 inch pitch was restamped to 13 inch. Since I speced BIANKA with a 16 inch 14 inch pitch I will need to try and see how the 13 inch pitch would affect preformance under electric propulsion with the different pitch. Another reason why it's good to double check things on haulouts.

WHAT WORKS: SOLLIGHT LIGHTSHIP LED LIGHTS

Several years ago I bought two items called Lightships which are made by a company called Sollight. They have turned out to be one of the most reliable and trouble free items on board and just do what they are supposed to do. A sailor could not ask for more than that. They are small LED light fixtures that are solar charged. They look like miniature lunar lander or some high tech bug with their three legs and suction cups. The suction cups are there so you can mount them to a hatch like this:

Those suction cups are pretty tenacious too. The units stayed attached to the overhead hatches all season until I pulled them off to be used at home in the winter.

On the opposite side is a small solar panel that charges up the battery contained in the unit and a switch as shown here:

The three position switch allows the unit to switch on two white LEDS for general illumination or a red LED only so that night vision is not ruined while moving about the cabin. The third position is the off position and no light will come on at dusk. I purchased two units three years ago. I use one in the main cabin and the other in the head. I would not say that you'll be able to read by their light but, they will shed enough light so you won't be tripping over things in the middle of the night. The one I installed in the head is about as bright as a night light but, not so bright that it will jolt you awake like the other lights on board will do. Another good thing is you never have to worry about turning them off because they might drain the battery as they shut off at dawn and start charging with the first rays of dawn. They also make it look like someone in the cabin as they turn on at dusk even if you are ashore and therefore can act as a possible deterrent to a thief who does not like to take any chances. They get Capt. Mike's approval because they just plain work.

REPAIRING A XANTREX XBM BATTERY MONITOR DISPLAY

In the two seasons since I converted BIANKA to electric propulsion. I only had to make one repair on it. That was to the Xantrex XBM battery monitor and that was partly my fault involving it's installation and not because of a defect in the product. The battery monitor in an electric boat is an important device. About as important as a fuel gauge in other boats. It shows you a number of things but, most important is the current you are drawing from the battery bank when using the electric motor. For this reason I installed the XBM in the cockpit. As shown in the photo below:


This was a great location and it was where the original Westerbeke panel was located. The meter on the left shows the current the 48 volt wind generator is providing to the battery bank the XBM battery monitor on the right shows the wind generator current and a little extra that is being provided by the 48 volt solar panel. Those were happier times. When I was getting ready for the second season under electric propulsion I noticed that the display on the XBM seemed to be getting dimmer and harder to read. Finally by the end of June the display was totally unreadable and looked like this:

As you can see the display is completely unreadable. The digits appear to be all on. So I call Xantrex customer service and after a considerable time on hold I was connected to India I assume. I installed the the Xantrex the previous June and this was now the July of the following year. The warranty for the XBM was one year. So it was out of warranty. Ok that is a given. But, Xantrex has also discontinued this model too. Can I get it repaired? After all it appeared that only the display had a problem. No was the answer. Can I purchase a new display part. Again the answer was NO! The best I could get from Xantrex was a discount if I bought a new Link Pro unit. Not really an option at this point since my system was set up for the XBM monitor and had a prescaler built in for the 48 volts. In addition to spending several hundred dollars on a new link pro I would also have to by a new prescaler too. Now I don't expect things to last forever on board. But, I don't want to spend several hundred dollars on a new battery monitor after only a year. Still it looked like there was not much I could do about it. I went on line mostly to rant about not being able to get the XBM repaired. When someone posted that maybe I should try and contact a company in the Netherlands called TBS. BINGO! That was the key. It seems TBS actually makes the units for Xantrex. I told them my story about Xantrex not providing parts or servicing the XBM and asked if they have a new display that they could sell me. The answer was yes. It would cost me about 10 Euros ($15 U.S) but, I would need to do a wire transfer to the company account. Unfortunately, the wire transfer cost an addition $30 dollars but, it was still cheaper than paying $300 plus for a new battery monitor and prescaler. So the new display arrives and it's time to make the repair.

NOTE FROM CAPT. MIKE:I am making this repair because I have experience in repairing and working on small scale electronic systems and circuit boards. If you do not have experience in soldering and desoldering on electronic systems you probably would be better taking the unit to a qualified marine electronics shop for repair.

The first thing I needed to do is desolder and remove the wire terminal connectors from the back of the XBM.

You need to do this to remove the circuit board from the case. The photo below shows the circuit board after the terminals have been removed:

You then go to the display side and carefully remove the grey protective cover from the front of the unit (I also got a new one with the new display). You then remove the three screws holding the front cover to the case:

You can then slide out the circuit board. Here is what the circuit board looks like after it's been removed from the case. The LCD display is on the left:




There is not much that you will be able to fix on it because of it's complex and specialized integrated circuits. The display and maybe a defective switch is all even I would tackle on this unit. To remove the defective display I used an XACTO knife to cut through the leads at the base of the display.

The traces on the circuit board are very fragile and the area is very small . Trying to desolder the many leads of the display using a soldering iron will probably damage a number circuit board traces. So I cut the leads and removed the bad display that way.


I then used the tip of the soldering iron to remove the remain pieces of leads that were attached to the circuit board traces.



After a little cleanup of the circuit board traces it's time to install the new display:

The defective display is on the left. The new display has a protective film that is removed before operation. the display also comes with a new protective panel which is at the top of the photo. Here is the new display mounted onto the circuit board.

All that is needed is to reassemble the unit including resoldering the wire terminal strips connect the wires and once again be able to monitor the battery bank.

LESSON LEARNED:Even though the Xantrex manual says this unit is splash proof. It does not mention anything about the sun. Having the XBM display exposed to the sun (even though it was covered when not in use) is what lead to it's failing. I have reinstalled the XBM under the cockpit in a location that I can easy see it when I lift a cockpit hatch. That should offer more protection and prevent another failure of the display.

MAST DOWN, MOTOR ON!

Bob over at BOATBITS had not posted for a few days which was unusual for him. But, I assumed he had been off on a sail. I was partly correct. His CAL 34 was demasted as he sailed "toward" Antigua. After he cut away the mast he turned on his electric motor and headed to Saint Criox for repairs. Here is the money quote:

"The motor to St Croix was uneventful, if a bit slow, but we made port with battery power to spare thanks in no small part to our Electric Yacht drive and Honda generator as they ran for twelve hours without a rest in really big sloppy seas and just seriously all around kicked some serious butt!"

While it's sad to read about the demasting. The good news for those of us with electric propulsion systems is that his electric motor did the job of getting the boat to St Criox for repairs in less than ideal conditions.

Splicing made easy.

Splicing is a good skill to learn for all boaters. But, it takes time and practice to master. This product called the EZ Splice looks like it might be useful when one needs to make a quick and easy splice for emergencies when one does not have the time to make a proper splice. I also do like the way you can make a "spring" line for those docking situations that have a lot of surge or wave action.

I might check it out at some point.

WINTERIZING AND TESTING THE ANTIFREEZE ON BOARD

I've mentioned one of the nice things about converting BIANKA to electric propulsion is those recurring pleasant reminders of cost savings of going electric. This shows up most dramatically at the end of the season when it comes time to winterize the boat. Not having to change oil, filters and buy gallons of antifreeze to winterize the engine certainly something that I do not miss doing nor does my wallet. The only thing I really need to do is winterize the fresh water system and as I pointed out in this post on winterizing BIANKA I only need to use a small amount of propylene glycol antifreeze to do that. Though if you still have a diesel to winterize you might want to take a look at Maine Sails sage advice on that issue. I'm only dealing with the on board water system here.

While I have not had a problem with winterizing using this method I did have an online discussions with some other sailors about checking to make sure that the after winterizing that the antifreeze was not diluted to the point of being ineffective at the temperatures in my location. Not a bad idea I thought. Some use chemically treated slips of paper that change color to match the level of protection the antifreeze solution is providing. Others use the floating ball gauges and others use an optical hand refractometer.

So I began researching the testing methods. The antifreeze test strips were reasonably cheap around ten bucks for 50 strips. But, then I read they were only reliable for about two years. This might make sense for a boatyard that winterizes a lot of boats but, not for me. They could also give erroneous readings if contaminated. The next device was the floating ball antifreeze testers. Reasonable in price perhaps only ballpark in accuracy.

The third option was the hand refractometer. The most accurate in my opinion but, also the most expensive. In my initial research I saw prices of $120 to $220. Way to expensive to make sense for my wallet.
 But, found other antifreeze refractometers for around fifty bucks. Now that's more like it. Even better it has scales for propylene glycol, ethylene glycol and one for checking the charge on flooded lead acid batteries. That's a win, win, win situation in my book so I bought it.

The above photo shows the unit I bought. It comes with two eyedroppers. The one shown here has the blue tape around it to remind me that I only use it to sample distilled water. The little black cap covers the alignment screw should one need to realign the gauge. It also includes the screwdriver in the case. The photo below shows the plastic cover in the open position.

To use this device you open the cover and put a a drop or two of the solution you are testing onto the blueish glass and close the plastic cover to spread the solution onto the glass. You then hold the refractometer up to a lighted area and take a reading by looking into the eyepiece. Here is what you see when you look into the refractometer with no liquid on the glass.
You have a completely blue field. You can see the three different scales for the propylene glycol antifreeze, battery fluid and ethylene glycol antifreeze. When you open the unit up and drop a few drops of distilled water onto the reading glass this is similar to what you will see when you do a reading:


Notice how it is clear at around 32 degrees F scale. This is how you check the alignment of the device. Note: The photo shows a slightly lower freezing point which may be due to some slight contamination from an earlier test. Cleaning the glass or adjust the alignment screw would correct his offset. But you get the idea. Next the cover was opened the glass cleaned and dried and a drop or two of propylene glycol antifreeze taken from BIANKA's winterized water system was analyzed as shown below:

This shows a freezing point of about 15 degrees Fahrenheit on the propelyne gycol scale. Only 3 degrees "warmer" than the pure antifreeze used to winterize the system. The bursting point for pvc piping according to the manufacturer of the antifreeze should be about - 7 degrees Fahrenheit. Which is "comfortably" below the normal lowest winter temperatures in my area. As they say your mileage may vary or location temperatures may be different. But, using a refractometer to test the antifreeze used to winterize the on board water system will give you peace of mind as you wait for spring to return. Just remember:

"How sad would be November if we had no knowledge of the spring!"- Edwin Way Teale

A LITTLE SAILING MUSIC PLEASE!

While I often sail just listening to the sounds of the natural world around me. I am always looking for music that will sound good when sailing for those times when I want to have some tunes in the background. This song performed by Genki Sudo with music written by Heigo Tani is one of those tunes. I can imagine listening to it on board while making five or six knots under sail. It's not a song about sailing but, I really like the music and it's an interesting music video too! Maybe you'll like it also!