Couple of questions:

You talk about the danger of jibing. Have you rigged a preventer?

What ran your batteries down to 50% in a day? That seems pretty low to me.

Paul Cassel wrote in
:

What ran your batteries down to 50% in a day? That seems pretty low to
me.



Skip's Morgan 46 is more like a 3BR 2BA house than a barebones sloop
with a handheld GPS on a lap board. There are plenty of electrical
loads on the 660AH (I think) house battery bank...fridge, freezer,
lighting, computers he reports to us on, a fine array of radios, sailing
instruments, navigational tools anyone would be proud to own. He
doesn't need puny WEFAX charts, though he can produce them on any
frequency, because there is an automatically receiving direct GOES 137
Mhz weather satellite system aboard.

It's one of the nicest-equipped sailboats I've ever been aboard. This
all takes power...lots of power. He charges from large solar panels
over the stern above the davits for the dingy, a nicely installed wind
charger which I think from his recent posts is the reason power has
drained out....because with a FOLLOWING wind, wing-n-wing sailing
downwind, the apparent wind over the wind charger is near zero...not the
constant 15-25 amps he normally creates from it. So, he's made a
mistake that's my pet peeve with sailors...."I can charge the batteries
in 30 minutes at 5000A", which is simply not possible due to physics and
chemistry, whether sailors like it or not...

The wind'll shift around to a more favorable charging position in the
wind genny after he rounds the Cape, I hope....giving him back his 15-
25A nice slow, but persistent, charging, 24/7.

Until then, he whould be slowly recharging at 1500 RPM from the Perkins
idling away in the bilge....whether it powers the boat much or not.

I believe he also has a 2KW Honda EU2000i superquiet gas genset aboard
he can deploy to run the 40A main charger he installed with me watching
while they were in Charleston last. That would also give him AC power
to run the fridge/freezer/computers and other loads that should be
running on AC to give the house batteries more time to properly
recharge. That would be my choice. Mine is only an EU1000i and it has
charged for many hours at sea very nicely on little fuel.

TURN HER INTO THE WIND, SKIP! LET THE WIND GENNY WORK A WHILE!

On 2008-07-31 23:19:47 -0400, Larry said:

Paul Cassel wrote in
:

What ran your batteries down to 50% in a day? That seems pretty low to
me.

Skip's Morgan 46 is more like a 3BR 2BA house than a barebones sloop
with a handheld GPS on a lap board. snip

It's one of the nicest-equipped sailboats I've ever been aboard.

I agree Flying Pig is beautiful, beautifully equipped (even beyond the
lovely mate/Admiral), and I love all the gadgets, but I'm not sure I
use as much power at home.

I'm more of a GPS with a laptop type of guy and the laptop's still optional.

Danged, I'd hate to maintain all those systems. (and all this ain't
news to Skip and Lydia.)

--
Jere Lull
Xan-à-Deux -- Tanzer 28 #4 out of Tolchester, MD
Xan's pages: http://web.mac.com/jerelull/iWeb/Xan/
Our BVI trips & tips: http://homepage.mac.com/jerelull/BVI/

Jere Lull wrote in news:2008080102564175249-
jerelull@maccom:

Danged, I'd hate to maintain all those systems. (and all this ain't
news to Skip and Lydia.)



If you've hung around Skip for a day, you know how calm he is. Most people
would have gone crazy from what they've been through, but not Skip. Life
throws something nasty at him, and he just carrys on solving whatever is
broke to whatever works, hardly losing his smile.

When we were in the throes of the alternator disaster, he worked in that
hot engine room on top of the hot Perkins for hours. The boat has no AC.
I nearly died of the South Carolina heat handing him tools and stuff as he
just carried on, calmly without any apparent frustration I could see. When
we found out the battery charger had been eaten by a leaky seawater hose
dripping on it, we walked down the dock and I took him to Waste Marine for
another one.....cooly and calmly.

It's unnatural not to just stand and curse once in a while. I'd explode
and wipe out a small city if I kept it bottled up like he does.

He's absolutely the calmest person on the planet. He should have been a
diplomat or poker player because you just can't read him by his smiling
face....(c;

Larry wrote:
Paul Cassel wrote in
:

What ran your batteries down to 50% in a day? That seems pretty low to
me.



Skip's Morgan 46 is more like a 3BR 2BA house than a barebones sloop
with a handheld GPS on a lap board.

He's running a reefer with battery power?

I'd personally object to running an engine at any rpm just to keep all
this load going. I find the noise of an engine, even my well insulated
one, quite objectionable and the stink of the polluting diesel
disgusting esp in a following wind. I can't see that as a solution which
would bring about a peaceful cruise.

I suppose if you must have all this electrical stuff, you have to do as
you say. I"ve heard of reefer compressors which are engine driven so you
run the engine for a short time & that freezes the plates & you are good
for another 2 days.Or you can have a 120 v output alternator which
powers the reefer to the same effect meaning I run the engine to freeze
the plates / cool the reefer but I"m not saddled with the *#& running
always.

Paul Cassel wrote in news:Ir-
:

Larry wrote:
Paul Cassel wrote in
:

What ran your batteries down to 50% in a day? That seems pretty low
to
me.



Skip's Morgan 46 is more like a 3BR 2BA house than a barebones sloop
with a handheld GPS on a lap board.

He's running a reefer with battery power?

Ice box has a 12V cooler in it and so dies the chest freezer he put that
fish into a couple of days ago. If Skip isn't going constantly downwind
where there's little apparent wind over the wind charger, that thing
makes 25A at 14.8V even if the sun doesn't shine on the solar panel
array that shades the whole dingy and aft deck of the Morgan 46. The
solar array was putting out nearly 15A screwing up our test of the
charging system at the dock in Charleston, so we had to go throw some
blankets over it to stop it screwing up the tests. He was making more
power than we were loading.....

It's a very nice installation with great instrumentation in the portside
passageway over the engine room hatch behind his workbench and more
instrumentation at the breaker panel at the nav station through the next
hatch forward....at the "comm and weather center".

Like I say, unless he's in a following wind to screw up the wind power,
he's got plenty of watts to power his refridgeration units.

I'm for wind chargers 100%, myself. I think they need more engineering
using the technology the mountain men invented at www.otherpower.com
Their multiphase, rare earth magnet powered altenators made out of the
wheels of disk braked cars creates an amazing amount of power with NO
GEARS, NO FAILURE MODES at incredibly low RPM because the magnets are SO
strong!

I continue to see marine uses for this alternator:
http://www.otherpower.com/wardalt.html
I can see it being directly driven by the freewheeling shaft that's not
on Lionheart (Amel Sharki 41) driving a flat belt and special Motorola
alternator that's always given us trouble starting and not anywhere near
as efficient. If the flat alternator won't fit on the shaft end of the
transmission in the boat, Otherpower has models they have plans for that
wrap magnets around the spinning shaft with stator coils wrapped around
longwise.

But, just for a moment, ponder how much power could be extracted for
your yacht if this flat, homemade alternator were encased in a box
bolted to the stern of your boat. The shaft sticking out through a
stuffing box had a universal joint on the end of it so I can fold up the
driveshaft to a stowed position for docking and in port. A lifting line
runs down from the top of the mast behind the boom topping lift to make
lifting the driveshaft and drive screw out of the water when it's not
appropriate to a vertical stowed position, perhaps a little bracket
coming off the after stern rail to lock it in place once lifted.

Set down into the water, the drag that powers the driving screw, a prop
set backwards to catch the water out behind the boat to create the
rotational driving force for this alternator, catches the unused current
running by setting the whole thing to spinning....creating 3-phase AC
power to be rectified into charging current by some big diodes (6) just
like they do on their wind turbines big blades driving the brake disk on
that big, but really cheap, car bearing and shaft INSIDE the box, out of
sight. Look around at the POWER this thing develops at very low RPM! A
sailboat can easily make that RPM happen dragging a screw through the
water astern of the rudder offshore to power your lives...IT MAKES NO
NOISE TO KEEP YOU AWAKE BECAUSE IT HAS ONE MOVING PART, no gears whining
away at some god awful RPM like the boat wind machines do!

You can even leave it in the water, churning away the AMPS, with the
engine running, although that's not too efficient, probably....(c;

From the webpage:
"The completed unit. It's already been attached to a homebrew wind
generator with an 8-foot diameter, 3-bladed rotor--and is up and flying!
See it HERE! We've already seen peaks of over 60 amps into a 12 volt
battery bank, and it survived 60-mph winds last week. Steady output of
30 amps in 28 mph winds, and reaches charging voltage at around 12 mph."

Now what in the world would you guys do with an extra 20, 30, 40, 60
amps of CONSTANT charging under sail?? You could have that nice fridge,
never run the motor at sea unless becalmed, the house batteries would
overcharge if you weren't careful! (Otherpower has charge controllers
for sale, by the way.) You'd have to leave the inverter running all
day!

Yes, I can see a lot of nice marine uses for this flat little alternator
that's TOTALLY SELF POWERED! It uses NO battery current to excite
it...just very powerful permanent magnets....sorta close to these coils
sealed in epoxy....(c;

I bet if you got them interested they would build a 'Marine Kit', ready
for assembly and installation...

Some they just stuck in the creek....
http://www.otherpower.com/otherpower_hydro.html

On Fri, 01 Aug 2008 03:19:47 +0000, Larry wrote:

a nicely installed wind
charger which I think from his recent posts is the reason power has
drained out....because with a FOLLOWING wind, wing-n-wing sailing
downwind, the apparent wind over the wind charger is near zero...not the
constant 15-25 amps he normally creates from it.

Larry,

What kind of wind gen does Skip have? Or what kind of winds is he
normally in to get 15-25 Amps?

I'm not being a smart-A#$ here. I just never saw consistant power that
high with mine. I had 2 AirMarines on 'Final Step'. In 3 years, about
2 years of that cruising and on the hook, I seldom saw more than a few
Amps. Rarely would I see 10, 15, 20 or even 35 Amps, this in 25 to 40
kt winds.

"Valkyrie" (current home) has 1 Air Marine mounted near the top of the
mizzen. I do see a bit more due to the height, but I'd say about 5
Amps or less in 12-15 Kt. winds.

I do have solar. 320 Watts at the moment and will be adding another
110 Watts, maybe 220 Watts. 'Final Step' had 300 Watts and handled the
fridge, watermaker and other normal stuff. 'Valkyrie' has a freezer
and larger watermaker. That's why I'm adding a bit.

To sumarize. From my experience, 4 years total, one can count on the
solar but wind is "lagnaipe" (cajun for something extra, like a
baker's dozen) and can't be counted on.

Rick

** Posted from http://www.teranews.com **

Rick Morel wrote in
:

What kind of wind gen does Skip have? Or what kind of winds is he
normally in to get 15-25 Amps?



Hmm....I don't think I ever looked to see what gen it was. At the time, we
were more worried about his engine alternator failures and the rotted out
AC power battery charger down in the engine room. Sorry I can't help you
further. Skip will be back online as soon as he gets to the dock. They're
up in the Gulf Stream past Hatteras mucking about East of the entrace of
Chesapeake Bay at the moment.

Watch him on Spot:
http://share.findmespot.com/shared/f...ots.jsp?&glId=
0sKGa9AJRCF45FaX5L5g6PLcZGvSb3nMe
which gives us position continuously.

I got sailmail from the shore station, today. They've had some rough
weather and some 8-10ft seas in winds that keep flopping around. They're
back in the stream tonight with better weather and time enough Skip can get
some sleep. They had a failure with the spinnaker pole on wing-n-wing
holding out the Genoa that's been trouble, and a little flooding from a
clogged up drain in the boat, but they're fine he reported. The rain has
the boat clean as a whistle from the waves, now.

Track him on Spot at the webpage above and you can ask him about his genny
when he gets to port.

"Rick Morel" wrote in message
...
What kind of wind gen does Skip have? Or what kind of winds is he
normally in to get 15-25 Amps?


Hi, Rick,

KISSenergy.com...

US distributor is Hotwire enterprises. They have a wealth of info on
their site svhotwire.com.

This is very specifically designed for the Caribbean environment;
doesn't start ramping up until about 10k and hits close to30A at about
25k...

On the last day before we started tacking all the time, it was putting
out 20, and the solar 25, in clear skies, moderate wind.

--
L8R

Skip

Morgan 461 #2
SV Flying Pig KI4MPC
See our galleries at www.justpickone.org/skip/gallery !
Follow us at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TheFlyingPigLog
and/or http://groups.google.com/group/flyingpiglog

"You are never given a wish without also being given the power to
make it come true. You may have to work for it however."
(and)
"There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its
hands. You seek problems because you need their gifts."
(Richard Bach, in The Reluctant Messiah)

On Wed, 6 Aug 2008 17:30:07 -0400, "Skip Gundlach"
wrote:

"Rick Morel" wrote in message
.. .
What kind of wind gen does Skip have? Or what kind of winds is he
normally in to get 15-25 Amps?


Hi, Rick,

KISSenergy.com...

US distributor is Hotwire enterprises. They have a wealth of info on
their site svhotwire.com.

This is very specifically designed for the Caribbean environment;
doesn't start ramping up until about 10k and hits close to30A at about
25k...

On the last day before we started tacking all the time, it was putting
out 20, and the solar 25, in clear skies, moderate wind.


Hi Skip,

Looks like the KISS puts out about twice as much as my Air Marine
about 10-15 kts and a fourth more about 18-25 kts. I'll stick with it,
though, since I have it and my previous one was reliable for several
years of cruising.

ENJOY Maine!!!!

Rick

** Posted from http://www.teranews.com **