TROUBLE DOWN BELOW: Bilge Pump Switch

I mentioned that after the two plus feet of snow that the blizzard NEMO dumped on the Isle of Long I found BIANKA's bilge half filled with water when I finally was able to check on the boat. Since I could empty the water by activating the bilge pump with the manual switch it was apparent the automatic bilge switch was the problem:

Because of some freelance work commitments I was not able to replace the switch for several weeks. I emptied the bilge and hoped for the best. When I finally got back to the boat yesterday I was glad to find only about an a half inch of water in the bilge. It seems the blowing snow of the blizzard had found some ways into the boat where normal rains do not.  The bilge switch that failed was a Rule Super Switch that had worked reliably since I bought BIANKA in 1995 and may have been installed when the boat was commissioned in 1986. So it had a pretty long life in the Marine environment. When I remove the switch I was surprised to find there were two parts that made up the bilge switch. There was the float switch it's self and an optional guard case that it fit into:

Since I never had to mess with it in seventeen years it came as a surprise. The case helps keep debris away from the floating switch and also has a button you can push to test the switch to make sure it is working. This helps to make sure any debris will not cause the switch to stick in either on or off position.

In my researching for a new bilge pump switch I read several reviews the the newer bilge pump switches were a little more trouble prone. As they changed from a mercury switch to a metal ball conducting between to contacts. Some reviews mention the switches not lasting too long before failures. So I look at other choices and settled on  a Water Witch 101 control.

The Water Witch is an electronic switch the senses water between two electrodes to turn the bilge pump on. It was also considerably smaller than the Rule switch it was replacing:

The install was pretty simple and the manufacturers web site had a diagram on how to wire it up for my particular installation. I have a switch panel on board where I can manually power the bilge pump via a switch or switch it over and have a bilge switch automatically turn the bilge pump on once the water rises.
I used  Anderson Powerpole Connectors to connect the switch and bilge pump. This will allow for easier trouble shooting and/or replacement in the future.

I waterproofed the connectors with some   Marine Adhesive Goop and will further waterproof it later with some heat shrink and additional sealant in the near future. With the units wired up I tested it by putting the switch into a plastic cup and then added some water:

The pump operated as expected after a short delay to prevent cycling of the pump the bilge pump turned on. I then removed the switch from the water:

Again after a short delay it turned off. Convinced that the switch was working correctly I installed it into the bilge by attaching the switch unit to the bilge pump hose with a cable ty:

Well that's one pre launch project finished now on to the next one.

200,000!

Somewhere in the night the BIANKA LOG BLOG reached 200,000 page views. Just wanted to say thank you to all those who come on board here.

BUH BYE SANDY!

"Sandy has been retired from the official list of Atlantic Basin tropical cyclone names by the World Meteorological Organization’s hurricane committee because of the extreme impacts it caused from Jamaica and Cuba to the Mid-Atlantic United States in October 2012. "- NOAA

No complaints from me. Even though I was one of the lucky ones. The day after Sandy hit I found BIANKA over a thousand feet away from where I last saw her the morning before. She was still attached to the mooring just not where I left her.  Here is some video I took of Long Island Sound in the morning before Sandy hit. Already Long Island Sound waters had covered the beach and were starting to crash onto the parking lot:


Here is a short video of me just barely making it off the spit area as the rising waters covered the roadway leading away from the harbor:

ANOTHER ELECTRIC BOAT: The Archimedes Project

Sail maker Ed Botterill asked me in an email if I had seen or heard about solar panels integrated into sailcloth material.   My answer was no,  but, when I look at the 540 square feet of sail that BIANKA uses it is an intriguing idea. Though I expect there will have to be many boats like BIANKA powered by electric propulsion on the waters before that type of solar technology becomes available  Though I have to admit sometimes when I'm sitting in the cockpit nursing a cold beer I think about how things would work with a deck full of solar panels instead of sails. A new sail would cost over $5,000 and that could buy a lot of solar panels too. Well,  a fellow named Carter down in Florida has actually done it and is currently underway doing sea trials with his boat.
He took an old run down sailboat with rotten wood masts:

and converted it into a solar powered trawler with 5 kilowatts of movable solar panels on deck:

Carter and his wife are on board under going sea trails with the boat along Florida's Gulf coast in preparations for an eventual trip doing The Great Circle Route.
 So if you see this unique electric boat in your travels tell them Capt. Mike says hi!

INSTRUMENTATION PART 10: CURRENT METER INSTALLATION

With the battery voltage meter part of the instrumentation project finished. It was time to move on to the important current meter part of the project. BIANKA already had a Xantrex XBM battery monitor but, to see it required that I move away from the helm and lift a cockpit hatch and bend down to see it. It was awkward and inconvenient to look at while underway.

I went looking for another meter that could measure the current being drawn from or charging the battery bank. But, the catch was I did not want to have to put in another shunt for measuring  current in the battery circuit like the XBM battery monitor already used. I wanted to keep any extra connections to a minimum. To do that I needed to use a hall effect type of current meter.  It determines a current value by measuring the magnetic flux around a piece of wire with current flowing through it. I found exactly what I needed with a company called Devicecraft. They had a hall effect current meter with a transducer that would fit the 2 AWG wires that connect to  BIANKA's 48 volt electric propulsion battery bank.



The hook up is farely simple.


The display required a supply voltage and three wires that go to the hall effect transducer.  I needed to run the transducer wires about eight feet and used some   Twisted Servo Hookup Wire,   normally used in things like model cars and planes:

Like I did for some of the wires for the battery voltage meters part of this project I enclosed the transducer wires in a  Techflex General Purpose 1/4-inch Braided Cable Sleeve.  This was to keep the wires together and also protect them from chafing.

The 100 amp Hall effect sensor will fit over the 2 AWG cable that is used in the my electric propulsion system but, would not fit over the existing lug. So I needed cut the existing battery cable. I used a ratcheting wire cutter like a Klein ratcheting cable cutter which cuts heavy duty battery cable easily:

and makes a nice flush cut:

I took the opportunity to trim some other 2 AWG  battery interconnections that were a little too long from my initial electric propulsion installation five years ago too.  The Hall Effect transducer has a polarity in terms of it's display. That is if you a drawing current from the battery the display should show a negative sign in the display. Likewise when charging the battery it is useful to see the current flow as positive (no minus sign) on the digital display.  In order to make sure I got the polarity right I used some of the trimmed battery cables and a jumper to check the polarity of the meter.

Once I had established the proper orientation for the sensor I put it on the battery cable and crimped a new lug on the end and reconnected it to the battery. I then ran the sensor wires up through the cockpit wire conduit I made and into the helm area using one of the  Fiberglass Wire Pull Rods    I carry on board:

It was then just a matter of hooking up the sensor and power wires to the current display and the instrumentation project was finished:

I mounted it the box temporarily at the helm and used it on my fall cruise up the Hudson River and back. I still need to make a permanent platform for the box at the helm location but, that is a project for another day.

HELM INSTRUMENTATION PROJECT PART NINE CLICK HERE

HELM INSTRUMENTATION PROJECT PART ONE CLICK HERE

A FEW MINUTES OF NATURE: DOLPHINS

A few years ago I was on a freighter heading from Houston to Mexico and South America. Every morning I would take a walk around the ship. One morning in the Gulf of Mexico I peered over the bow and found a pod of  Dolphins hitching a ride on the bow wave. I must have watched them for twenty minutes here is a small sample of that magical moment:

THAT WAS QUICK

I went down to the boatyard again on Friday to look for the Kings Loran manual that a sailor in Norway asked me about. While there I found out my new 500 pound mooring was already rigged up and ready to be dropped. But, that also meant the bill would soon be coming in the mail too.  At least I'll be able to relax a little in case another storm like Sandy heads this way knowing the mooring is 200 pounds heavier and has some new chain on it.

A CAPT. MIKE MONEY SAVING TIP:Defender Marine sale

Capt. Mike loves to save a bit of money. As luck would have it Defender Marine is having it's annual warehouse sale for the next two days. If you need something for the boat you might want to check them out while the sale is going on and pick up what you need.

A NEW MOORING

I was working on board the boat yesterday when there was a tap on the hull. It was the boat yard manager asking me what I wanted to do about my mooring since they were starting to set things up for the up coming season. We had talked about increasing the size of the mooring ever since I found BIANKA a thousand feet from it's usual location after Hurricane Sandy. The original mooring that held BIANKA since 1996 was 300 lbs. It did an admiral job until superstorm Sandy came ashore last year. I could have jumped up to 400 lbs but, he mentioned BIANKA's bow mounted mast that maybe 500 pounds might be better. I had to agree. Might as well go BIG and not push my luck this Hurricane Season. I drove out of the boatyard singing the Bob Dylan song  New Morning but, changed the lyrics slightly singing the chorus as "new mooring" instead.

BARNACLES AND BENETEAUS

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Another day of warmth arrived last week. So I once again took advantage of it and went down to the boatyard to check on BIANKA.  A couple of the guys from the boatyard  had a 36 foot Beneteau in the marine lift and were working hard on the bottom with scrappers. The boat was being voluntarily repossessed and had been sitting at a dock for three years. Here is what the bottom looked like after three years:

There were barnacles and other growth of course. But, most of the bottom was covered with thousands of nice sized mussels:

Somewhere in the above photo is a mussel covered sail drive. Below is another view:

I was severely tempted to gather a pound or two of the mussels and whip up some Mussels Posillipo for dinner.

But, I instead left them all for the Seagulls who with several hundred pounds of mussels piled up next to the dock will have thought they had died and went to heaven.
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