Author: boldflight

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Time to stop sailing blind. Instruments!

One of the goals for 2025 is to get the instruments story figured out. My current situation is that I have a Raymarine mast-top wind transducer, a depth sounder with knot meter (that is not installed), and a i70s multicolor display. The motor came with its own monochrome display that shows state of charge, draw, and RPMs.

What I’d like to be able to see:

  • Temperature indoor and outdoor as well as water temp
  • Barometric pressure – current & historical
  • Humidity indoor
  • Wind speed & direction, both true and apparent.
  • Depth
  • Position, on charts
  • Speed over water and ground
  • Heading
  • Date & time
  • Battery state of charge, current draw by engine & house, estimated time/distance remaining
  • Engine/prop RPMs

For many of the above I’ll need to get new sensors. Raymarine is on a SeaTalk NG bus but I’d like to have N2K bus, bridged over to SeaTalk. I’d also like to see all that on an iPad, preferably over WiFi or Bluetooth instead of a cable.

Here is what I’m planning to put in place:

All the stuff in red is something I’d need to buy. Most is just connectors.

And that, in theory, would give me all the data I need (and more):

The only question mark is how to interface the engine to the NEMA2000 network. I reached out to Electric Yacht and they currently don’t have anything to offer. That said, there seems to be a good example I could follow. It’s so great to have people smarter than me share their knowledge (and code!)

This will be a fun learning experience!

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Doors installed

With varnish dry, it was time to mount the doors. Hinges had a lot of rust on them so I took a detour and spent over an hour hitting them with a buffer until some of the shine was restored.

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Finished window coverings

Made window curtains for the rollers I installed awhile back. The material was a bit too stretchy and pretty hard to work with. Not my best sewing but good enough.

Mounted them on the rollers to cover the windows. Happy with the result – great privacy and a lot less interior varnish fading from the sun.

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Time to move propulsion to Lithium

After a lot of thinking (and some $ saving) I’m finally ready to rip out my gel battery pack and jump to Lithium. The AGM batteries are now pretty old and lost quite a bit of capacity and power. The house battery is even older and can’t carry water pump and head flush well without severely dimming the lights.

The propulsion system setup I have now is something like this

I’ll keep the fuse, relay, and all the components of the motor but replace the rest with a Victron-based system so it will look something like this

This new setup gives me a lot of advantages:

  • More power to the engine
  • Bigger capacity/range – 300Ah vs. 182Ah
  • Less weight
  • Inverter
  • N2K interface / better software
  • Simpler system: house and engine off the same battery bank

Will be super fun to put this all in and configure it. Some of the components have already arrived. It’s a pain to get those giant new batteries onboard. Thanks to my dock neighbor Lauren who gave me a hand.

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First meals in the galley

Great to be able to use the galley to cook and warm up some food! A bunch of improvements were already evident – need to organize the space a bit better. But still – getting closer to a very livable space.

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Trimmed head door and dry fit lock

After I rebuilt all the panels, I haven’t yet tried to put the door back. Surely, it did not fit. Had to trim both sides of the door and make a small lip to hide the hinge. I was also lucky to find the original door handle and lock, which I installed into the new slimmer door. Will need to hide old hole with some small teak bangs.