I was up late last night, so decided to have a lie in this morning. Once up, I realised it was Friday, and a quiet day in the marina as it’s a holiday here being a muslim country. So I thought I would try to figure out this power issue again. I made up a special cable that made it easy to measure the voltages on the outlets, and headed off to the next pontoon in search of 240V. After a lot of tries, I found a good socket, so I decided to move the boat. Dave from Phoenix, a Brit who has a Halberg Rassey he has renovated after a fire, hence the name, helped take my lines. It was slack water and next to no wind, so seemed perfect for me to practice manoeuvring. In fact all I had to do was reverse in a very straight line about 50 metres, but given the boat walks to port when going astern, I needed to push the stern out a bit. With her in reverse at tick-over revs, she actually went straight back, if anything moving a little to starboard, so a little kick of forward gear followed by astern brought her alongside just perfectly, the bow thruster helped as well.
Now I’m plugged into proper mains, I can use the electric kettle as well as the Air con at the same time, whoopee.
So back to cleaning the main cabin, this is proving difficult, I did the corridor between the cabin and the forward berth, everything is taking so long. Tomorrow I will have been afloat for a week, I was hoping to have everything cleaned by then. Will have to make a big effort tomorrow.
I took a break after the first bash at cleaning as I had a new hose pipe and wanted to test it out, boys never get tired of playing with hose pipes it seems. I decided to clean up the marks on the foredeck, it all came up very well, and I ended up doing more than I planned. It will all need doing properly and to be polished later, but for now it’s looking smart.
Fixed a couple of lamps that were broken, and tried to understand how the boat is wired for shore power, but failed, by then it was too dark to see the cable run, what I did find out is the 240V seems to go straight to a transformer, probably an isolation or step down. The boat was made to run on 110V USA Style, and lots of kit onboard is 110V, however it has spent most of it’s life in the 220-240V world, there are two shore power connectors , one marked 110 and one marked 240, so I need to get my head around that, I also need to decide which one to go with.
Had another dinner of salad, with Patros feta and herb cheese this time, very tasty, followed by a walk along the coast. As you can see from some of the pictures I posted, the marina is almost underneath the Penang to butterworth bridge, this is the old one to the north of the island. Under the bridge are lots of small fishing boats moored, and of an evening the locals use it as a sort of hang out / courting location. Tonight there were loads of young people, mostly arriving on moped, and having barbecues sitting under the flyovers, looking out to sea, many of them with a fishing rod out too.
If I can get the boat cleaning finished this weekend, I can get stuck into the main jobs next week, I have some important work to organise like:
- Sort out shore power so I can have hot water and other 110V things working
- Get the USA Style gas bottles refilled
- Fix the engine control panel, lots to do there
- Sort out the survey/Insurance and get new standing rigging ordered
- Get a liferaft and some flares
- Fix the marine Air Con
- Get the dinghy and outboard working, then I can go out and do some fishing
- Fix instruments, fit masthead wind speed/direction sensor
- Tons of varnishing
- Fix a couple of minor leaks on the deck
Once that’s done, I can start some proper sailing, the other 100 jobs, like pickling the water-maker and sorting out the filtration systems can wait.
So not too bad really
Paul C
So….you can move to any berth you want?
Not sure if that’s serious or humorous, but on the serious front, there is no management here, I could have stayed a month and they wouldn’t have noticed, they don’t know which boat belongs to which owner.
On the humorous front, yes, I am mastering sailing betweens berths, soon it will be ports, then maybe countries once I am confident 😉
Hi Paul I think that transformer is a step down from 240 to 110v The shore supply cable 240v uses the transformer to step down to the boats system of 110. The shore cable 11ov goes the the 110v system probably to the 110v side of the transformer.
I expect you’re right Ron, that seems most logical, but does that mean that when I’m plugged into 240V, 110V will be appearing on the shore socket (male pins) on the boats side. Also the inverse, if I’m running on 110V in the states say, will the transformer be stepping it back up to 240V which will be appearing on the shore supply socket (male) on the side of the boat next to the 110V socket!
I don’t see any way of isolating the sockets, that’s why I want to trace through the wiring so I can be sure of what’s going on. Trouble is the shore sockets are bolted through the coaming in a totally inaccessible place. I tried to buzz them through yesterday, but there was no connection from the shore side to the 110V switch panel, it was later I spotted a switch to select between Shore, OFF and internal power. The internal power I think is the 12V to 110V sine wave inverter, which is a huge monster. The switch was in off so that explains some of the mystery.
Will have a play tomorrow.
Yes, I was going to warn you that could possibly be the arrangment. Suggest you put a volt meter on the 110v pins when connected to 240v, and vis versa when connected to 110v shore supply. I would have suspected a change over switch may be connected somewhere in the system. Otherwise some blanking sockets may be possible
I made a pun and I didn’t even notice 🙂
What is involved in ‘pickling the water-maker’? It sounds intriguing! 🙂
Well in fact it’s only the membrane that needs to be pickled, basically it’s a filter that has holes so small that water gets through but not salt, but the holes are so small, you need a massive amount of ‘push’ to get the water through at all. if you leave it standing for a while the holes get blocked, so soaking it in a chemical will clear out the holes, then you have to flush the chemicals out with more chemical which have to be flushed with water, then you can start making drinking water from sea water. I think however that this membrane will be beyond repair, having been sitting here idle for so long.
I’m no expert on water makers, but I think that’s what’s going on. Might just be easier to make a big water shop at tesco.