Exit Only Sails Once Again

[Mark424]

Originally Posted by maxingout

Exit Only is finally underway after a complete refit and associated walletectomy.

Congrats Dave & Donna. I look forward to more blogs and learnings from your travels.

I know it's not the downwind milk run, but you really should consider the Pacific Northwest and maybe even Alaska. It's not like you are in a hurry

[maxingout]

Originally Posted by Montanan

Best wishes Dave.

Hope you will continue with your blog as you progress. Much enjoyed reading about your past adventure and your answering of my questions.

Dan

Now that the refit is done and broken bones healed, I want to start writing again. It was touch and go there for a while, but good genes are a big help so far. We will be shooting lots of video this time around as well. David is a master of the go pro 7, and I keep my trusty iPhone camera with me most of the time.

[maxingout]

Originally Posted by Mark424

Congrats Dave & Donna. I look forward to more blogs and learnings from your travels.

I know it's not the downwind milk run, but you really should consider the Pacific Northwest and maybe even Alaska. It's not like you are in a hurry

I would love to cruise up in your area. Unfortunately the crew revolts when the temperature falls below 75 degrees. Mutiny!

[Intentional Drifter]

Yes, Dave, we are on cool side up here at 50 degrees + N latitude, which means that the comfortable cruising season is relatively short (hydronic heaters are most definitely your friend!). But, it was only after our 2-year cruise (somewhat inspired by you) that my wife and I realized that some of the best cruising grounds in the world are right in our back yard.


Desolation Sound, the Broughtons, W Coast of Vancouver Island, Haida Gwaii. Beautiful, marvelous, relatively few others once you get north of Desolation, and challenging enough to keep you on your toes.


If you should decide to head up this way, do let us know! There's quite a number of PNW folks here on CF. We'll show you a good time.



ID

[maxingout]

Our problem in cold weather is condensation.

When we were in New Zealand winter, the walls of our cabins were wet with condensation.

We need a boat with proper insulation to win the condensation battle if we are going to do cool/cold weather sailing.

[rossad]

Maxingout. What a perfect name with such an exciting thread. When adversity strikes its how we cope and stick together that would seem very evident in your family. Moving forward to a goal. And in life its kinda like Mick Jagger isn't it....."Cant always get what you want but if you try sometimes you get what you need"

I have read many of your writing's Dave and enjoyed them a lot. I wish you well health is wealth and wealth is health if you have not your health we become poor indeed. Looking forward to more of you photos and adventures. And you never know you just might come back and put up with the condensation ... just maybe here in NZ come say hello at Waiheke Island.

[maxingout]

Originally Posted by rossad

Maxingout. What a perfect name with such an exciting thread. When adversity strikes its how we cope and stick together that would seem very evident in your family. Moving forward to a goal. And in life its kinda like Mick Jagger isn't it....."Cant always get what you want but if you try sometimes you get what you need"

I have read many of your writing's Dave and enjoyed them a lot. I wish you well health is wealth and wealth is health if you have not your health we become poor indeed. Looking forward to more of you photos and adventures. And you never know you just might come back and put up with the condensation ... just maybe here in NZ come say hello at Waiheke Island.

New Zealand was one of our favorite destinations and we sailed there twice from Suva.

Two weeks after I arrived in New Zealand, I rolled my car in Hawera area and ended up in Taranaki Base Hospital in New Plymouth for two months. It was nip and tuck for awhile. Two broken legs, five broken ribs, broken shoulder blade, punctured lung, internal bleeding. Three surgeries, blood transfusions - the works! I am alive today because of excellent NZ health care. It was about a year before I could sail back to Fiji. The second trip to New Zealand did not involve any medical adventures.

Kiwi hospitality is awesome and I seriously considered settling there. I have always regretted that I did not stay In NZ.

Anyways, I don’t know where we will end up on this throw of the dice. But we are going for it.

[GILow]

Originally Posted by maxingout

..We are breaking in a crew that includes a five year old and eight year old...

Oh dear, I had not realised sourcing crew was getting so difficult.

[maxingout]

Originally Posted by GILow

Oh dear, I had not realised sourcing crew was getting so difficult.

Start them young. Bring them up right.

[GILow]

Originally Posted by maxingout

Start them young. Bring them up right.

As someone who has suffered the sailing disease since young, I have to question the assertion "bring them up right", but yeah, start them young for sure.

An aside, are your Aerogen 6s still going OK? Mine is good, but I need to do a bit of maintenance on it before I set off in December. (I think it was you that gave me the trick of blade alignment using a table and matchboxes?)

[maxingout]

Originally Posted by GILow

As someone who has suffered the sailing disease since young, I have to question the assertion "bring them up right", but yeah, start them young for sure.

An aside, are your Aerogen 6s still going OK? Mine is good, but I need to do a bit of maintenance on it before I set off in December. (I think it was you that gave me the trick of blade alignment using a table and matchboxes?)

Both Aerogen 6 are still up and running after putting in new bearings. The starboard Aerogen goes like a bat out of hell. The port Aerogen spins slower and when we took the back off, we saw that grease had worked its way into the Area of the windings. Way too much grease. I suspect that it will speed up over time or at least we will have good output when the wind is 40 knots on the sluggish port generator. I wish they still made these generators. I would buy another one in a heart beat.

[GILow]

Originally Posted by maxingout

Both Aerogen 6 are still up and running after putting in new bearings. The starboard Aerogen goes like a bat out of hell. The port Aerogen spins slower and when we took the back off, we saw that grease had worked its way into the Area of the windings. Way too much grease. I suspect that it will speed up over time or at least we will have good output when the wind is 40 knots on the sluggish port generator. I wish they still made these generators. I would buy another one in a heart beat.

Good to know, and thank you for the tip on the grease. I will check mine for that problem when I service it. I keep a couple of spare bearings on board, they were so cheap I thought I might as well get a few at once.

FWIW, I have made my own regulator and output accounting system for the Aerogen from a picaxe chip and a few bits and bobs. I somehow had ended up with the one version of the regulator that was not voltage adjustable and it was fighting the solar regulator charging algorithm.

It's still a work in progress, but when it is tested I was going to publish the design here on CF as it would work with any DC wind generator. I'll try to remember to send you a PM when I post it, you may be tempted if you enjoy a bit of DIY electronics.

[maxingout]

Originally Posted by GILow

Good to know, and thank you for the tip on the grease. I will check mine for that problem when I service it. I keep a couple of spare bearings on board, they were so cheap I thought I might as well get a few at once.

FWIW, I have made my own regulator and output accounting system for the Aerogen from a picaxe chip and a few bits and bobs. I somehow had ended up with the one version of the regulator that was not voltage adjustable and it was fighting the solar regulator charging algorithm.

It's still a work in progress, but when it is tested I was going to publish the design here on CF as it would work with any DC wind generator. I'll try to remember to send you a PM when I post it, you may be tempted if you enjoy a bit of DIY electronics.

Thanks. We have new solar panels with a VictronConnect regulator. Now I get an idea as to what is happening to our charging system. It’s a dance between wind generators, solar panels, and engines. The solar panel output goes up and down in response to what the other charging systems are doing.

I think I know what’s happening, but I may be fooling myself.

[GILow]

Originally Posted by maxingout

Thanks. We have new solar panels with a VictronConnect regulator. Now I get an idea as to what is happening to our charging system. It’s a dance between wind generators, solar panels, and engines. The solar panel output goes up and down in response to what the other charging systems are doing.

I think I know what’s happening, but I may be fooling myself.

Keep a close eye that you don't end up with the situation I found myself in. The regulator on my Aerogen would start diverting power out of the battery bank to the dump resistors, once the battery voltage reached 13.6 volts. You could hear the regulator buzzing slightly when it did so and pretty soon the resistors got hot.

If I had one of the adjustable regulators, all I would have had to do is turn the cutoff voltage up a bit (quite a bit) to allow the solar regulators to get the batteries from bulk to float, or perhaps fit a diode on the battery side of the regulator.

But I don't have the adjustable regulator, I didn't want the wind generator to overcharge the batteries, and I didn't like the low-wind charge-loss that would come from the voltage drop of a diode in the circuit.

Plus there was no accounting facility on the Aerogen regulator, hence I thought "bugger it" and built my own. My version stays at or below the float voltage, unless I manually tell it to go to bulk voltage, which resets on a timer to prevent damage.

My engine charging is through a smart multi stage charger from the engine's 24 volt battery to the house 12 volt, so no problems there at least.

[maxingout]

With six people on board using lights, fans, computers and refrigeration, we don’t get overcharged batteries. If the wind generators are putting power into the dump resistors, we just feather them into the wind and stop them. Our systems are very basic but they work.

When we were in Florida, I saw a Nordhaven that had four hard drives that relate to systems on board go down, and getting it fixed required bringing in a technician and $15k to sort it all out.

Our systems are simple. Simple systems for simple minds.