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