Solar Panels

Solar panels are installed and making electricity. The past few weeks has been a crash course in solar power technology. We ended up with six Kyocera panels for a total of 840 watts. We went with Blue Sky MPPT controllers for their compact size and excellent efficiency. With solar panels, shading is the enemy as it will reduce the output of other panels that are in the same circuit. To provide some isolation (which minimizes shading on one panel from affecting the rest of the array) we wired the panels in parallel, with home runs from each panel down to the controllers. We put three panels on each controller to further isolate the effects of shading on the overall output and to provide some redundancy. Each panel is fused before the controllers and the output of each controller is fused where it meets the positive bus of the house battery bank. This was a lot of wiring and took most of a three day weekend to finish. With everything online, we have been able to pull 50 amps out of the array at 14.2 volts during the day with clear skies. It could probably go a little higher if the house batteries a little less charged up. We had to turn on a lot of electrical stuff to get the controllers to see enough demand to get the output up to 50 amps. Our target for the rooftop array was 50-60 amps max output so we are pretty close to our expectations. We have been "off the grid" for three days now, with daytime solar charging seeming to keep up with our 24 hour demands. Each afternoon, our "state of charge" for the house batteries is back up to 100%. The nice summer weather and long days have helped. We are still using the shore power for the electric element in the water heater but when cruising, our domestic hot water can be heated on demand with the diesel burner that provides our hydronic heating circuit or via the heat exchanger with the engine coolant when we are underway. Everything else is running off the 12 volt house bank (refrigeration, lights, pumps, etc.) or using the AC output of the inverter (misc appliances, home depot freezer, and some electronics) which is fed by the same house battery bank. I think that a couple of more panels (maybe on top of the aft dinghy davits when we get those built) will give us a very solid solar power set-up to meet most of our demands most of the year. A wind generator would be a nice add-on too. Of course the beauty of solar is no moving parts and little to no maintenance.

Stud Welder

In order to mount the solar panels, we decided to rent a CD (Capacitive Discharge) stud welder to create the attachment points for the solar panel brackets on the wheelhouse roof. It consists of a welding unit and a gun that holds the threaded studs and is spring loaded to "fire" the studs into the molten metal that is formed when an arc is created by the machine in the base metal. It all happens in a few milliseconds, and creates a very strong threaded attachment point on the steel deck plate. The beauty of this machine is that it welds so quickly that there is little to no heat transfer to the back of the plate that you are welding to. This means no paint burn, and no need to remove the interior panelling and insulation on the backside of the weld (we tested this first just to make sure). This saved us at least a days worth of labor removing and re-installing the interior overheads and painting the burn through, which would be required with conventional welding. The whole job (including some extra studs on the foredeck for the kayak cradle brackets) took just a few hours. We used 316 stainless and painted the weld area well with epoxy primer and top coat.

A few new projects

We scored an excellent set of used steamer chairs on Craigslist, with cushions and a bonus bench. Spent a day cleaning them up and doing some minor repairs to the hardware. Much more comfortable that our old plastic lawn furniture. The bench was part of the package and it actually turned out to be a great addition to the back deck (with a little Skill-saw modification to the legs to fit the camber of the deck):

We pulled our old trusty kayaks out of storage and will be making some custom cradles fro them so they can live on the forward deck in front of the wheelhouse:

I've been adding some rigging to our mast for lifting and future sail control for the aft boom. In the next couple of months, we're going to be working on solar panels for the wheelhouse roof (starting with figuring out what we can fit up there), and building the aft davit system for storing and launching a dinghy:

First Haulout

2.5 years after our launch, we finally had to get around to our first real haul-out. Even though we were probably about half a year over our planned dry dock interval of two years, things below the waterline were generally good. The massive hull anodes were in fine shape with signs of actively working to protect the boat, but only 10-20% used up. Even the smaller anodes on the rudder and around the prop were good enough to clean up and re-install. The zinc collars on the rudder shaft and prop shaft were definitely due, and the keel cooler anodes were all gone (including the bolts!). I had actually discovered this a few weeks prior when doing an inspection dive of the boat. This is what put the dry dock at the top of our priority list. The keel cooler anodes will definitely be an "every six months or less" inspection item going forward. The keel coolers were in good shape with no sign of wastage, so I guess we got to these in time. I also discovered that when I was testing the coolers in the rush to get the boat ready for launch in 2012, I had forgotten to replace the temporary brass drain plugs with proper bronze alloy plugs. Regular brass underwater deteriorates very fast, acting like an anode as all the zinc in the brass is removed through galvanic action. This leaves the brass very weak and spongy. We got to these just in time too. Otherwise a pretty standard haul out, with some basic bottom spot prep and prime and a couple of coats of good commercial ablative anti-fouling paint. Bay Marine in Richmond did a very nice job for us, and showed us all kinds of hospitality while we were "living at the ship yard" for the week of our haul out.

We decided to go black on the bottom paint color this time. This will give us a good indication of how the new paint is wearing- If we see the original red starting to coming through, we'll know that the latest bottom paint has ablated away and it's time to re-coat. With all the interior work we've done on the boat (and gear we've brought on board) the boat was trimmed down a bit in the stern. To keep the topsides clean from growth when fully loaded with fuel and cruising supplies, I raised the bottom paint from mid-ships back to the transom about 4"- something I've been wanting to do since we launched the boat.

Another item that I knocked off my to do list was a re-pitch and balance of the prop. We were generally cruising at 7.5 knots (our "economy cruising  speed") at around 1800 rpm or so. I had 2" added to the pitch of the propeller, making it a 34x26 prop. Now we get our target cruising speed at a slightly more leisurely rpm of about 1600 or so. This feels just about right now, and the exhaust temp shows us that we are still loading the engine correctly to keep the machinery happy. 

Keel cooler with new zincs anodes.

Hull anode- still in good shape.

Some loose ends

With the boat back at home, there were quite a few loose ends to tie up. The biggest job was sorting out all the wiring coming out of the mast and running it to the interior of the boat. This took a few days to get all the wires to the right places inside, and terminated at the electrical panel, helm, and overhead console:

I also added the final brackets for the ladder which now feels very secure going up and down from the crows nest:

The view is fantastic:

So now everything works! antennas have great reception mounted up high with heavy duty coax, radar is hooked up and operational again, hailer horns (both PA and "listen features) work great, and all the electrical connections for nav lights, deck lights, etc are working. The hailer that we are using has an intercom function so I mounted a remote station in a box up on the crows nest railing  This allows easy communication with the wheelhouse and sound quality with the hard wired connection is very good compared to a wireless radio or handheld vhf:

Still tweaking the lines and rigging but I did add a couple of cleats at the base of the mast for securing the boom lift and the halyard. I'm working on some propane tank brackets too. More on that next time: