Yet another incident has befallen me – to again keep me at Monty’s boatyard.\u00a0 But before I get to that, let me tell you the good news.<\/p>\n
The Torqeedo is performing even better than before!\u00a0 Last Friday Current Sunshine went back into the water and we motored her not far to tie up at the jetty.\u00a0 But far enough to be impressed by the power of the motor now that the bottom opening in the well has been reduced, and flaps added to streamline the hull where the motor pokes through.<\/p>\n
On board were Steve and Erik. Steve has been on board for previous Torqeedo tests<\/a>, and both he and I were really surprised about how much grunt it has now.\u00a0 We suspect it is due to the added streamlining.\u00a0 Although there’s also two other adjustments that maybe we got right, and have helped to give this extra thrust.\u00a0 The angle of the motor leg was trimmed so that the thrust is exactly parallel with the water, and the depth of the prop lowered just little from earlier tests to the minimum recommended clearance of 50mm (2 inches).\u00a0 All told it has worked well.<\/p>\n Right now the batteries are recharging from another discharge test I did while on the slip.\u00a0 In a few days they’ll be charged again and we can do another speed test. While on the slip I did two discharge tests. In the first one the low voltage alarm triggered at 155 amphours.\u00a0 An improvement on the earlier 140 amphours<\/a>, but still low.\u00a0 So I charged them again, and then did another full discharge test.<\/p>\n This time the discharge got to 175 amphours and still going.\u00a0 But I had to stop the test because she was about to go back in the water that evening, and so I had to put them back on charge.\u00a0 If I had continued the test its possible that they could have reached the expected 200 ah this time.\u00a0 When I terminated the test the voltage was still good.<\/p>\n Thats it for the good news…<\/p>\n One of the projects I did on the slip was to upgrade the fixing of the bobstay to the stem.\u00a0 This required a new stainless steel fitting for the bow, and which Mark’s Arcs fabricated for me. But when on Friday morning I began attaching it, the drilling of the fixing holes revealed damp and weakened timber.\u00a0 It will have to be repaired.<\/p>\n What’s not clear is the extent of water ingress and weakening of the timber.\u00a0 That will need some time back on the cradle again to investigate the extent of the problem and figure out how to repair it.\u00a0 So cruising plans are on hold yet again.<\/p>\n