Posted on

Speed test – not.

A glassy smooth Careel Bay beckoned me to do some speed trials.  Cos so far there’s always been a bit of wind and it wasn’t clear just how much the wind was contributing to, or slowing her speed.

So I dropped the mooring and started taking notes as she wove out through the moorings.

1630 watts = 4.5 knots

4600 watts = 6.2 knots – full throttle

Strange…  in earlier tests I was confident that she was topping out at about 6.5 knots so this is odd to see maximum speed a little less than I expected.  Perhaps those readings were wind assisted.  Anyway, back to it. I’m using the stop watch on my iPod Touch to time how long it takes to come to a full stop.  And then I can do the same test late with the standard prop. Back to neutral and then to full power in reverse.

Clunk

and the watts drop off to around 700.  What was that? Can’t see any obstruction to the prop. Try forward – also in forward the maximum load is about 700 watts.

Broken ends of pin sat at a nice angle to grab the shaft

I suspect the shear pin may have broken. Now I’m worried the prop might fall off, so I throttle back to about 100 watts and she’s going along at 1.5 knots.  I haven’t gone far from the mooring, the day is still calm, so I’ll limp back ok at this speed.

Sure enough the ends of the pin have sheared off as designed and have laid against the shaft in such a way that they still grab a prop a little.  700 watts worth actually.

Speculating about the maximum speed being reduced, and remembering having hit some big jellyfish last weekend, its likely that the prop has been slipping just that little ever since the jelly fish encounter. One of them really got hit with the prop and the motor almost stalled, and it was probably then that the pin sheared.

Pin ends have rubbed a slight groove in the shaft

So its rather clever of me to have decided to do this test today in perfect calm, and discover the problem.  Otherwise I may not have noticed until the chips were down and I really needed it. I now think the clunk I heard was the pin ends swapping around as the load reversed on the prop.

Its nice that the nut didn’t come undone with the free spinning of the prop on the shaft. And drop the prop into the sea.

Posted on

New Throttle

Replacement throttle lever and mounting plate

Back in Sydney Harbour about two months ago I had a problem with a wobbly throttle control.  I anchored right away in nearby Farm Cove and that afternoon Claude instructed me on making a temporary fix using Loctite to stop the bolt from loosening again.

Since then Claude has been to The Torqeedo factory and returned with a new throttle control of a new design that precludes this problem from raising its head again.

Torx bolts hold the plate onto underside of controller

The mounting plate is held by torx head bolts which I can undo with the Leatherman tool.  Crikey! A leatherman is a handy thing to have on a boat.

Removing the mounting plate reveals an intriguing connection between the throttle lever and the control box electronics.  Well, actually no physical connection at all – its uses a magnetic field for this analogue to digital interface.  This is a nice idea for a marine environment – its leaves no entry point for water.

Underside of control - no axis for lever to attach to - its done by magnets.

This job only took a few minutes (and even longer to take photos of and write about!) and I gain a spare throttle lever. Now thats fixed I have no excuse but go on with repairing the cockpit seat.

The chart is of Broken Bay, of which Careel Bay is a minor part, on the edge of Pittwater.  I enjoyed plotting our course down to Sydney, and then Port Hacking – the chart plotter was out of action due to losing the GPS antenna. Which is a pity cos it cost $475 for a new one. Even though I sometimes plot our position on a paper chart, it comes from the GPS coordinates.  So it was fun to do it from compass bearings and other coastal navigation techniques.

Posted on

Careel Bay Contentment

Careel Bay sunrise

Sunrise this morning over Careel Bay is just how I feel just now. Peaceful and lovely. My life is unfolding in joyful way just now.  And really its more to do with my inner being than my life’s circumstances – which are admittedly, like a Careel Bay sunrise, pretty good.

I’m enjoying tinkering on Current Sunshine, and catching up with friends, and getting to know new ones. And getting better connected with myself.

Pulling the boom apart

When I was sailing back with Tim and Finn the outhaul stopped working and foot of the mainsail got very slack.  Just a little problem – a shackle had come undone inside the boom. And just a few seconds to put it back together and tighten it up.  But many hours of satisfying tinkering pulling the boom apart to find what had gone wrong, and to reach the renegade shackle.

Somewhere in here I'm sure there's a loose shackle pin...

Such ‘problems’ are a delightful way to spend a few hours and keep me in touch with my essence, and seagulls.  And, by the way ,who have no compunction about crapping on the floats where they like to spend their evenings telling stories.

I’ve been catching up with old friends in the Blue Mountains – now that I have my car here I can drive there in a couple of hours.  Con and I will be going on adventures soon, so we have planning to do. And to farewell Katina and Simon who are moving to New Zealand bro.

Sue and Tarci and Moto Guzzi

And Tarci and Sue dropped by here travelling on their Moto Guzzi.  Their other vehicle is a Warram catamaran, which is soon to run entirely on the sun.  So we’ve been yarning about Torqeedo motors and Lithium batteries and life.

I’ll be able to help them set up their system and with bit of luck and learning from my experiments, should get it going quickly and easily.

And talking of experiments, I have a new prop from Claude – its called a speed prop – and when we trialled it when Tarci was here. Top speed seems similar and maybe even less than with the standard prop.  We reached 6.5 knots, but when we turned and went back the other way, the speed dropped. Even though we tried to have the light wind on the beam, I think we misjudged and had it a little aft on the first run, and so it effected the results.  It appears to be similar or slower than the standard one.

But hey, its sure rocks in reverse. If you’ve been following this blog, you’ll know I was disappointed with the Torqeedo when going astern.  No longer.  With this ‘speed’ prop reverse is really strong and when doing about 4 knots forward will stop her really quickly.  We didn’t actually make any measurements of reverse power but I hope to that soon.

Well – I have tinkering to do, energy to feel, and visitors coming, so enough of the blog…