Waving not drowning?

[Franziska]

Originally Posted by goboatingnow

Around me the general consensus Is add more solar and discontinue wind. It’s now noticeable how few wind generators there are these days.

Might be the case in Greece, but not on the anchorages here at the Atlantic coast of the Iberian peninsula.
A lot of boats have windgens.

Might be also that windgens are more popular amongst the crowd which prefers anchorages, in marinas they are sometimes considered noisy.

On grey overcast days there is often wind to top up power despite the lack of sunlight.
That, plus the nighttime advantages Ann mentioned. One is not always sailing with wind from behind.

Anyway, both are renewables which is fundamentaly good.

[Na Mara]

Hi Ann. We have 600Ah of Lithium batteries that hold a usable 7kWh of energy. I’ve done an energy budget with the electric cooker and it’s between 2-3kWh a day depend on if we are stationary or moving. So we have 2-3 days of charge in the batteries. On average though we need to put back about 2-3kWh a day. Assuming average 10kn wind speeds a 400W wind generator provides about 1kWh a day. A 600W one provides about 2kWh (bigger swept area equals better light winds performance). Add a bit of shore power and engine charging and a bit of solar from the lifeline panels and we should be good.

We will be sailing half in the med and half out in the Atlantic from Madeira north to Svalbard. That latter half is mostly gulf stream sailing (once past the azores high) and so we are talking pretty steady winds. In the med you also get high katabatic winds in certain locations and winter storms so I think we will mostly be covered. I’m leaning toward a 600W sharky unit (same manufacturer as silent wind). It produces 3kWh a day in 14kn winds and 3 times that in anything over 25kn. It only costs about 300euros more than the silent wind, but you don’t get the snazzy app.

If anyone has any experience of the sharky 601 I’d love to hear about it. It a very new unit so there isn’t much out there about it.

[Icarus]

Originally Posted by Na Mara

We have two plans for when we return.



Plan A is that we have a small flat in the center of Stockholm that we bought before jacking in our jobs and that we rent out whilst we are away. When we return we move back into that flat, the kids start school and uni respectively and me and the missus go on a mad job hunt before the money runs out.



Plan B is that we return and moor the boat in Stockholm and live aboard while we do all the above. Hopefully, we manage to get jobs and buy and move into a flat before the ice forces the boat back south for the winter. If not then the kids will need to live with family in Stockholm while we live aboard in Malmö until we sort out jobs (teacher and analyst) and somewhere to live.



What we will do will depend on how much we clear when we sell the house and whether we can get a mortgage lender on board. Plan A i preferable to plan B mostly because it makes returning easier, but also because if we do plan B there is a risk that we just keep going West when we hit the Bahamas.

Sounds somewhat complicated..

[Icarus]

Originally Posted by Na Mara

Assuming that I an still healthy, i as a licensed teacher should be able to get some type of reasonable job pretty easily due to the teacher shortage in Sweden. It might not be a great job but it will pay the bills.

My wife’s job is more tricky and it might take her a bit longer. We will need both salaries to be able to afford a place to live in Stockholm. On just one salary we would have to buy way outside the city

Security comes with a hefty price tag.

[Icarus]

Originally Posted by Na Mara

Again though I’m mostly interested in those who have sold up and sailed away. Did you find it as scary as I am finding it? How did you cope with the precarity you were placing your family into?

I sold up and sailed away some 30 years ago...
Still travelling, the magic never wore off.
Currently in the Philippines.
As for income I FIFO in the mining industry.
Off the grid life do not suit everyone

[Icarus]

Originally Posted by Jim Cate

Something to remember: After a prolonged cruise you may find that what you now consider a desirable environment has changed considerably. Cruising has that effect on folks... myself included.

Jim

Well said

[Na Mara]

We finally have a functioning electrical system. Yipeee!!

The problem with the inverter turned out to be a firmware issue. That makes me feel better about getting the Victron people in as they explicitly state in the instructions that firmware updates are only to be performed by qualified service guys. They updated the firmware and the inverter worked fine, so no big problem there. In addition, they reprogrammed the battery protector so it is now also working giving 12DC on the boat and they wired up the alternator and the ws500 regulator so that is now also working.

However, the big change they made to the system was adding a dedicated AGM battery for the bow thruster. Apparently the old bowthrusters have such high inrush currents that they can crash drop the voltage on the battery they draw from and so its not a good idea to have them wired to the engine battery or the LFP bank. I must admit I don't really understand why they cant be wired to the engine battery as the diesel engine only requires electricity for the fuel pump, but the victron dudes were adamant that I should have a dedicated battery for the thruster and so I now have that plus the DC-DC charger for charging it. You can see in the attached picture the 100Ah bowthruster battery, 130Ah engine battery and the 3 x200Ah LFP batteries.

As you can see from the pictures I don't have much space left in the electrical cabinet or the battery box so any charge controllers are going to have to be put elsewhere. I'm thinking in the aft steering locker. It will mean running about 5-6 m of DC cable to the distribution system (the blue thing to the left in the picture of the electrical cabinet) but I can live with that.

Unbelievably, though, the shipping company that was shipping my new electric cooker to me lost the pallet the cooker was on. These cookers are handmade in Italy, so now they have to make a new one for me and ship that again. All in all, this means there is going to be a month delay in getting the new cooker, which means I wont be able to try that out over Easter as I had hoped to. Bit disappointing but that's life I suppose.

All this faff with the electricity system has meant greater cost and delay than I had originally bargained for. The greater cost has eaten into my budget for a charging system and hydrovane. We may have to do this year with just shore power and engine charging. It might be good to try that to see what our actual usage is and how much charging we get parasitically from the engine and from shore hook ups.

In any case, the plan now is that me and the boy move aboard on the 10th of June this year and live aboard until October when the new flat becomes available. The wife will move aboard in the beginning of July. June to August we will cruise the Baltic and then from August until October we will be in a guest harbour somewhere in Stockholm. Those 4-5 months aboard should let us really iron out the kinks and be a good test run for heading off for real a year later.