On A New Tack

Re-configuring a Victron Energy isolation transformer This is a companion article to a YouTube video  covering the same topic. What are they and why do I need one? Victron Energy isolation transformers are often used on boats that connect to shore power in order to provide a means of providing isolation between the shore power and the AC power that exists on the boat.  The transformer sits in between those two worlds and isolates that two power supplies through magnetic flux and an air-gap. The reason this is needed on a marine vessel is because without it, small leakage currents can flow between the earth ground for shore power and the "earth ground" connection on the boat, which is usually connected to water through a propeller shaft, out-drive, sail-drive or sacrificial zincs. That creates a loop and that small leakage current greatly accelerates any galvanic corrosion that naturally happens. Current flows through the water because of the salt content, or even in fresh-wat...

How to revive a failing water pump (and make it better!) This is a companion blog article to a YouTube video we did on the same topic. Disclaimer: You must be electrically and mechanically competent to complete these repairs/upgrades.  If you are unsure of any step, stop and get professional assistance.  You can always reach out to me and I will try my best to help. Our Vision 444 ES catamaran uses two freshwater pumps, one in each hull.  Each one is a 24V diaphragm pump made by Pentair.  Don't worry, the same steps apply to 12V pumps. We have one in each hull, but we also have crossover valves, which when we open, allows one pump to pressurize the water on both sides.  We normally operate them this way so that we drain water from one tank, then we can switch which pump is powered up and pull from the other tank. About a year after we launched, the port side pump started acting up.  It would sputter and get sporadic in running as it got close to the cut-off...

 A few people have asked for more details about out network on-board.  Instead of trying to describe it, and because I should have one anyways, I decided to create a Network Diagram. So far, the network has been working great.  On occasion, the 2.4 GHZ radio in the MNC-1250 stops responding, however I am working with their tech support to get to the bottom of it.  We have that device mounted upside down to the "ceiling" of what I call the network area in the owners cabin.  I have a suspicion that it maty be overheating as it it not sitting in the orientation it was designed to be in.  As it turns out, I have a spare 12v computer-type fan that I am going to wire into the 12V fuse block in there and mount it to the router and see if that makes a difference.  I also went into the configuration settings and turned down the output power of both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz radios, since the signals do not have to go very far to cover the boat.  This should also...

Living on a self-sufficient boat without giving up The Cloud?! If you are at all like me, you've begun to rely more and more on one or more Cloud Services.  Apple iCloud, Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive and many, many more basically all offer the same solution: "You have digital things that are important to you; you pay us a small amount per month and we'll manage keeping it safe and protect you from hardware failures and data loss." I firmly believe that hosted cloud storage is one of the great conveniences that just about anyone under the age of 70 should be using.  The solutions are downright cheap, given how much storage capacity you can get and how much you would pay to get that data back if you lost it. I have used all of the above and my provider of choice is Google Drive, though we also use Apple iCloud to automatically backup our iDevices, as least for now. Life 2.0 We will still have a cloud storage provider when we set sail, but what are we going ...

Tech Article posts are those that came about because of something I was writing in a more typical blog entry and decided to break out as a reference item. Hull speed is nautical speak for maximum theoretical speed for a "displacement" boat. A boat is basically just plopped into a body of water and displaces an amount of water equal to the weight of the boat.  A boat's weight and it's displacement are the same.  That is true for every boat that is not moving. Once you add movement, that can change. A displacement hull is the name used to signify a boat design where the hull just pushes water as the boat moves. The fastest a displacement hull boat can move (Hull Speed) is determined with the formula: HS = 1.34 * SQRT(LWL) HS is the Hull Speed in Nautical Miles per Hour, aka knots   LWL is the  L ength at the  W ater  L ine in ft. As an example, as 38' monuhull sailboat, may have a 33' LWL.  Therefore, the Hull Speed for this b...