Viveiro – Part II

Wim gets suspicious and does a SOH (State Of Health) test to see what’s going on. The battery isn’t performing even close to the specifications (only one 10th of what is advertised). Wim writes a complaint to the manufacturer and the company will take them back for a full refund. So now we order new batteries (more expensive, bigger, and heavier) from another supplier on Amazon…

Wim dismantles the box, removes the electronics, and seals it in transparent protective silicone. He then cuts down the front mounting plate and makes a new hole in the panel so everything will fit. Wires are fed up through the pedestal and everything is reassembled. We test everything and it all looks good!

In the meantime, Sher sews the last of the boat fender pyjamas and then a few water-bottle pyjamas from the leftover fabric 🙂

let’s see who it is….

While Sher is sewing the pyjamas, Wim is installing the cable entry for the speaker and pulls a guiding wire from Port to Starboard through the backrest of the rear cockpit bench. Then we need to feed the wire all the way around to the VHF in the salon… lots of pushing and pulling.

Sher continues sewing… next, a new nightgown (yes MomCat, we won’t say pyjama for this one as it is long and more like a nightgown! 🙂 )for the steering pedestal, covering the instrument pod. The old cover didn’t fit the newly installed bow thruster joystick anymore.

We have moved the seat a bit forward so that the case fits behind it. We strap the cases to the seat pedestal. This will need some improvement but it’s okay for a test ride. Off we go to see how they go!

We go uphill. Where we normally would walk to save power, we now go full throttle. Well, when it gets very steep, the scooters can’t manage and we still have to walk, having the scooters at 4-5km/h on cruise control (so we don’t have to push them).

The views are lovely and we so enjoy our scooter outings. Now, with ample additional battery power, we can scooter far and wide!

The next day, April 5th, we have a small celebration: today it’s one year ago that Sher came aboard Dione IV! One year of joyful living together! We celebrate with a lunch in a restaurant and a toast on board and we’re sure there will be many, many happy years to come!

Wim gets suspicious. Let’s do a SOH (State Of Health) test. Turn down the voltage of the DC-DC converter to 13v, connect a small inverter, connect 2 soldering irons as a load. Then, we have 1A of current from the battery. The battery is 30Ah so it should maintain this current for 30 hours.

Well, after 3 hours and 20 minutes the battery’s BMS shuts down at under voltage… So, that is 3.3Ah of capacity… Wim writes a serious complaint to the manufacturer. A factor 10 less is totally unacceptable!

Another project that was waiting for a long time is our bow thruster joystick (photo June 2024). The joystick provided with the bow thruster is a very big housing that wouldn’t fit in out instrument pod at the steering pedestal. We made a temporary solution, an external box strapped to the pedestal on the side, but we don’t like that at all. The manufacturer promised to supply a very small joystick but despite of our many requests they didn’t. And that’s over a year now. A bad turn, Vetus!

So, we decide to find another solution.

Wim dismantles the device and mills down the housing, removing it completely until only a flat front panel is left.

Cut it smaller so it fits on our panel.

Mill down the electronics part completely.

Mill a square hole in the instrument pod.

But, now that we had to remove the housing (which was waterproof, more or less), we have to protect the electronics against moisture. On Amazon, we find a protective silicone gel for circuit boards.

Well protected with a thick layer of transparent silicone.

Reposition the engine key switch and brightness knob for the screen.

Assemble everything with sealant to make it a waterproof unit again.

In the meantime, Sher sews water bottle pyjamas from the leftover fender pyjamas fabric 🙂

So that the water bottles won’t rattle in the rack while we’re sailing!

The holes for the screws broke off spontaneously.

The plastic has completely degraded and has become brittle.

Hmm. This multimeter is pretty old…

I start thinking: I bought it in 1985! That time, the Fluke 77 was a revolutionary piece of equipment. Since 1970, I had been using/wasting/blown out/burnt 10 or 20 analog multimeters and this one is digital! And auto ranging! Wow! The 560 Dutch Guilders was a huge investment that time. Being startup entrepreneurs in the sound & light business, this amount was more than a monthly income, mostly… But, good tools are important…

So, now, after 40 (!) years of service, after an almost daily use in these 40 years, after this Fluke 77 traveled across the world maybe 50 or even 100 times (it has been in Australia, in Indonesia, in Brazil, in Malaysia, in Russia, in Turkey, in Colombia, in Thailand, in Jordan, etc., in every European country many times), it has been suffering a huge blow-out on a mistake with a current measurement on a big lithium battery bank that was capable of delivering way over 2000 amps and that literally vaporized the leads and the current measurement circuit inside the Fluke (which was the reason for buying the yellow Fluke clamp current meter) and many, many more adventures like blowing it out by a measurement on a 10 kilovolt laser power supply and it was repaired for free (!) by Fluke because they found it such an extraordinary event (and they were pleasantly surprised I had survived it 🙂 ).

Well, now the time has come to really say goodbye to the good old Fluke 77.

Amazon has an incredible offer on a PeakTech 3440 (German quality, too) I can’t say no to. This is the next level multimeter, oscilloscope, measurements computer, etcetera.

It will probably not make it through the next 40 years like the Fluke but I won’t live to tell 😉 And for now, it’s a joy!

Okay, the instrument pod continues…

To make 100% sure that everything is waterproof, all components are sealed with the silicone PCB sealant/glue at the rear side.

Now that the joystick is in the instrument pod, we have to re-route the bow thruster control cable. To reach the pedestal, we have to open the ceiling in the Port aft cabin. We we release the hatch, we see a lot of dust under the steering system lever. It appears that the nylon bearing in the lever has worn out. Hm. We felt some play in the steering wheel lately. So, this was the cause… Well, we have these nylon balls at stock! Wim ordered a few of them at Jefa Steering Systems last year.

So we replace the nylon ball and mount the lever head back.

All good and no play in the steering system any more!

We feed the cable up through the pedestal and mount the instrument pod. We test everything and it all looks good!

Wim sends a message with some pictures to the sales guy from Vetus. He responds a bit embarrassed and ashamed… He says: you Frisians! “As it net kin sa’t it moat, dan moat it mar sa’t it kin” (in Frisian language). Which means something like: The Frisian way: Just solve it. One way or another.

We’ve bought some new lights for the decksalon. We wanted to have some red lights for our nightly passages and these new ones can do both: warm white and red.

They have a nice diffused light and a soft red.

Another one goes into the ceiling of the corridor to the bathroom.

They are made of machined aluminum and they are nicely flush mounted.

So, a night light for visiting the toilet…

Oh, it has been too long since we did a night passage! We are really looking forward to that again!

Another little project is a USB socket near our bed.

We can plug in the new reading light or charge the fan, a phone or the little moon light.

We always try to aspire: if something get’s on board, something else has to leave. Else, Dione IV will get completely stuffed and our waterline will sink more and more… Until we sink…

So, new reading light in, old reading light out!

And: new multimeter in, old multimeter out.

Aww! That hurts 🙁

The old lights from the decksalon get a new life: we replace the very old cool white LED’s in the Port aft cabin by the warm white, dimmable lights.

And of course: new lights in, old lights out…

These were the first white LED’s on the market in 2007! They were 3 volts so Wim had to connect 4 of them in series op the 12 volts onboard system. They weren’t dimmable and they had an awkward blueish white light.

At the same time, we replace the old reading light in the aft cabin by a USB socket. So, the USB reading light can be used. Or a USB-powered fan or charge a phone or whatever.

There goes the 20 year old halogen reading light…

Sher has ordered some turquoise waterproof outdoor fabric. She made a small pyjama. But who’s wearing the pyjama??

Unveil….

It’s our new cockpit VHF loudspeaker!

In the meantime, Wim has been installing the cable entry for it and pulled a guiding wire from Port to Starboard through the backrest of the rear cockpit bench.

Mighty Mitsu needed an oil change. After some troubles, we got our preferred engine oil delivered from a Spanish car wholesaler.

Wim extracts the oil from the gearbox and engine with the oil extractor and fills the gearbox with new oil by means of the little white funnel.

New Energy and a nice drink for Marvelous Mighty Mitsu!

He’s good for the next 200 engine hours.

Another little project. Switches for the Victron Cerbo and our digital clock/weather station.

They were on the group called 12v sockets but we want to be able to switch the sockets separate from the Cerbo and the clock. The reason for that is energy saving while we are at anchor. All these small devices (like USB sockets and DC-DC converters)use a little power and all of them together count up to a 100 watts! For 24 hours a day. That is 2,4 kWh per day. That is what our solar panels yield on a cloudy summer day…

So, by being able to switch off things separately we don’t need we can save a lot of ‘idle’ energy.

Like we don’t need the Cerbo display when we sleep. And the internet router. Or have USB chargers on while we don’t charge anything. But we want to leave the clock on.

Here’s our new VHF cockpit loudspeaker.

The old one below it.

We glued 2 very strong Neodymium magnets to the base so we can place it anywhere we want. The most sensible place seems the unused winch foundations, for now.

The old one doesn’t have such a nice pyjama!

No, it’s not a pyjama, Sher’s mother says: it’s more like a nightgown! She’s right: pyjama’s have legs 🙂

Well, it protects the speaker for the rain when we don’t use it. Although it should be waterproof.

‘Scanstrut’ stainless steel cable entry. Crazy expensive. But 100% watertight! We use ‘m everywhere on deck, for the mast cables. They never leak and they are easy for releasing the cables.

We draw the cables. Tough job. The cables run halfway through Dione IV, 10 meters. Cross the backrest of the rear cockpit bench from Port to Starboard, entering out newly made hatch in the SB ceiling of the aft deck.

It takes us the entire afternoon but here it is: at the VHF radio, ready to be connected.

Meanwhile, Sher sews a new nightgown (yes MomCat, we won’t say pyjama for this one as it is more like a nightgown! 🙂 )for the steering pedestal, covering the instrument pod. The old cover didn’t fit the newly installed bow thruster joystick anymore.

In the morning, we have a partial solar eclipse. Because of the light cloudy sky, we can see it without special glasses.

New VHF speaker in, old speaker out… or so Wim thinks. Sher rescues the little outdoor speaker and brings it to the marina office to find it a new home. 🙂

A bright sunny day. Let’s test our damaged solar panel. It has some ugly folds in it and at least 1 cell must be broken. But it has output voltage. So, let’s see if it yields something.

We have full sun on both Port and Starboard panels so we can compare.

Guess what! The yields are identical! Both sides do 106W. So, the panel isn’t broken, that’s a surprise!

We have bought 2 new panels already but obviously we don’t need ‘m now. We keep those as spares.

Finally, the new batteries for the Project Super Scooter have arrived. The box is severely damaged but the batteries are fine.

First, charge them.

They are 52v, 20Ah. So, about 1 kWh of energy.

Sher starts sewing a cover for our dinghy floor. It has an inflatable floor (Air deck) and that’s made of PVC. PVC degrades from sunlight UV and it has to be protected. The dinghy itself is made of Hypalon, which is UV-resistant. Last year, we covered the floor with an old duvet cover. Now that Sher has her nice heavy-duty Pfaff, she can sew a perfect fitting cover!

Wim has finished assembling the SuperScooterProject cases.

Everything fits nice and smooth. Well, Wim has done some practicing with the previous cases…

An improvement is a heat sink for the DC-DC converter at the outside. The converter got bloody hot.

The heat sink is attached to the back plate of the DC-DC board and sticks though a square hole to the outside of the case.

This is the DC-DC board. It converts the battery voltage (with changes from 58,8v for a fully charged battery to 46v for an empty battery) to a steady voltage of 52,8v for the scooter’s internal battery (that is about 90% SOC for the scooter).

And it controls the current. We limit the current to 3A.

Test ride for the SuperScooters! Wim has done some short test rides the previous days but now, we’re going for a long ride.

We have moved the seat a bit forward so that the case fits behind it. We strapped the cases to seat pedestal. This will need some improvement but it’s okay for a test ride.

The scooter’s internal batteries are around 80%.

We go uphill. Were we normally would go walking to save power, we now go full throttle. Well, when it gets very steep, the scooters can’t manage and we still have to walk, having the scooters at 5km/h cruise control (so we don’t have to push them).

We reach the top of the hill and we can’t go any further because the road turns into a dirt road. So, we go back the same way.

But the system works! Going full throttle uphill, the 3A charge from the power case isn’t enough and the SOC of the scooter battery slowly goes down. But when driving horizontally, the SOC stays the same. Meaning, the 3A from the power case supplies the motor.

Sometimes, we get some temperature warnings and we pause for the scooters to cool down.

At the top of the hill, there’s a goat with a youngster.

They are so sweet and curiously looking at us.

A break for lunch. The power cases keep charging the scooter batteries.

While we’re having a picnic, the scooter batteries come up to 85-90%.

We have a small celebration: today it’s one year ago that Sher came aboard Dione IV! We celebrate with a lunch in a restaurant and a toast on board and we’re sure there wil be many, many years to come!

We inflate the Dinghy because tomorrow we’ll leave Viveiro and be at anchor most of the time!

A pleasant conclusion to our 2 months in Viveiro!