Me matey Charlie Doane just returned from skippering a New England to Caribbean delivery that included its rightful share of electronics drama. One night, sailing to windward and heeled down hard, he heard the “instruments down!” call from the cockpit. His first reaction — after yelling back “cope!” — was to nose around the power supply system, a whiff of sizzling circuitry leading the way. Low and behold, down in a low locker was a 24v-12v step-down transformer immersed in a puddle of saltwater that had apparently been collecting from a slight deck/hull joint leak that was getting a prolonged dunking. Electronics breakdowns, and other problems, tend to make deliveries challenging, and it’s telling that this was a seasoned 48’ Swan, the Mercedes of production boats. She’s been in service eight years, but apparently the little leak and the low gizmo had never interacted before. Another interesting aspect to this tale is that Charlie's crew were clients of Offshore Passage Opportunities, delivering the boat to learn offshore seamanship by doing. Not only did they sail on to Bermuda without instruments, but there helped Charlie locate a functional stepper installed elsewhere on the boat and swap it out. There were more invaluable lessons, including some fuel management theater, and I'm hoping Charlie will write up the whole trip for Sail.
Isn’t it neat that a lot of boaters gleefully invent stuff to improve their vessels? A fairly extreme example is one Roger Jones who put together his own elaborate boat monitoring system, wrote the necessary software too, and then created a site where anyone can download this software for free and read Roger’s well written instructions about how to assemble the hardware from off-the-shelf parts. Roger’s screen shots indicate that Version 2, currently in “beta”, can not only mind batteries, AC power, pumps, lights, and NMEA 0183 nav data, but can also display weather buoy data (from where I don’t know) and video. Nice work, Roger! (By the way, I learned about this because Roger posted a message on our Electronics Forum at PMY).
Wouldn't it be great to watch the sun going down while listening to a mosquito powered entertainment set in your boat's cockpit...;-)?
"We know what you're thinking. A robot that totes around human sewage, digesting living beings for energy? What, you�re not inexorably excited about this? The EcoBot II (ah, what a benign, nonthreatening name) is fed flies into 12 sewage-based bacterial fuel cells, which break them down, digest them, and use the electrons released as current."
Came across an article over at SailNet on 'standard' and 'smart' alternators. Might be of interest to you if you still have your regular automotive alternator installed...
"How does the performance of a standard regulator compare to that of a three-stage regulator? Not very well if the regulator is an automotive unit with a cut-out voltage around 13.8 volts. A 13.8-volt regulator may be satisfactory on a powerboat, but it does a lousy job of charging sailboat batteries. Raising the battery charge level from 50 percent to 90 percent with a 13.8-volt charging source takes more than five hours. Few of us can stand to run the engine at anchor for that long, so unless there is an alternative charging source, the batteries get fully charged only when the boat is under power for a long period. The rest of the time the batteries remain undercharged. The inevitable result is a condition known as sulfation, which is the number one cause of battery death."
Me matey Charlie Doane just returned from skippering a New England to Caribbean delivery that included its rightful share of electronics drama. One night, sailing to windward and heeled down hard, he heard the “instruments down!” call from the cockpit. His first reaction — after yelling back “cope!” — was to nose around the power supply system, a whiff of sizzling circuitry leading the way. Low and behold, down in a low locker was a 24v-12v step-down transformer immersed in a puddle of saltwater that had apparently been collecting from a slight deck/hull joint leak that was getting a prolonged dunking. Electronics breakdowns, and other problems, tend to make deliveries challenging, and it’s telling that this was a seasoned 48’ Swan, the Mercedes of production boats. She’s been in service eight years, but apparently the little leak and the low gizmo had never interacted before. Another interesting aspect to this tale is that Charlie's crew were clients of Offshore Passage Opportunities, delivering the boat to learn offshore seamanship by doing. Not only did they sail on to Bermuda without instruments, but there helped Charlie locate a functional stepper installed elsewhere on the boat and swap it out. There were more invaluable lessons, including some fuel management theater, and I'm hoping Charlie will write up the whole trip for Sail.
Isn’t it neat that a lot of boaters gleefully invent stuff to improve their vessels? A fairly extreme example is one Roger Jones who put together his own elaborate boat monitoring system, wrote the necessary software too, and then created a 
Came across an