What we have done since Christmas 2012 to end of January 2013.
The shape end of the beast. Four winds did not survive the recesion but they made simple and robust products
Putting the tail on the beasty. After all these months looking at the thing in bits it was quite exciting to find that all the bits fitted.
Angles, are everything. I had sruggled on several weekends to get this too fit. Getting a welder to fix tabs and then discovering that screw taps work like a hot dam and a cheap angle grinder can save you hours of effort and frustration.
More hands do work. Paul gave up his Saturday afternoon and things went along real smoothly.
The blades tail are on. Yes I did put the blades on backwards. Luckily their are 2 other boats with the four winds on the dock
One of the fun parts of doing this work is figuring out all the little tweaks that to be done so so other wise the whole show will not work. Here the lower bearing (plastic collar) has to be attached but too tightly otherwise the beasty will not swing in the wind
Paul fixing the trap collar. This stops the rig taking off!
I wrapped the generator in Tuck Tape as I could not paint due to temp being below 0c
What we have done in January? Well apart from the beasty being mounted we have wired it into the DC charging system. This includes very sophisticated monitors and controllers. Changing the 12volt battery system to a 6volt battery system. Mounting the very large SSB Radio and running the cables for the antenna.
Yip we need a collar!
Got to get the angles right!
Well it looks good. Hope the bloody thing works!
One thing you quickly come to understand with a boat is that everything is created just small enough to inflict pain and suffering but doable so you have to do it.
Almost. But then again something is sure to go wrong.
the solar panels and the wind gen. should give us around between 120 and 240 amp hours per day.
These little claps that attach the panels to the rail are not cheap and took weeks of hunting down on the internet.
I hate drilling holes in the boat to mount wires. Sort of final and will they trip me up sort of quandary.
well she is up. Done to specks and it should be great. The crew keeps looking at a friends boat that has his Four Winds mounted with stainless.
Looks agricultural but it is in the book, so here we go.
About time someone got here hands dirty lol.
Never had to do this in the Oriental kitchen in Bangkok.
The new heart of our boat. DC 440 amps for the House Battery! Not only high amps but very heavy duty 6 volt batteries (golf cart) combined in series, something I knew I had to do for years but could never justify the cost. Now no option.
Since we plan to live completely “off the grid” we need an effective method of monitoring what goes into the batteries and what goes out. This $200 piece of plastic is reckoned to be the best out there at the moment so!
Four things eat the amps. Our SSB will burn 30amps on transmit keep it short and sweet!
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