Anchor Lights

The sailing vessel Valhalla has some interesting ideas for those anchor lights we like to put lower down on our sail boats. He writes...
VALHALLA, like most cruising boats, has an anchor light at the top of the main mast.  Though in full compliance with the Colregs, it is NOT the best situation for two important reasons:

1.  The bulb consumes 20 watts which, at 12 VDC, draws 1.67 amps ... an excessive amount of power.
2.  The light is too high for easy recognition by small boats moving around an anchorage, and can be mistaken for a star or planet due to the elevation!
There are now low powered LED navigation lights on the market which range in price from US$ 100-250.  A bit pricey for the budget. 
My first solution was to use a utility light (Davis Utility Mega-Light)  hung on the flag halyard, below the spreaders. This light has a photocell switch and, with the most efficient of two supplied bulbs, reduced the amperage draw to 0.11 amps.  A further reduction in power was to build a new bulb using the base of a burned out one.  Four white LED's (which have a drop of 3 volts at 20 ma) were soldered in series and positioned to face 90 degrees apart.  The leads were secured inside the bulb with a small amount of epoxy putty.  The current of 0.02 amps was negligible while giving sufficient brightness at a cost of US$0.50.

The Davis utility lights have a short (6 -9 months) life span due to UV deterioration of the plastic housing which soon cracks and allows water to flood the unit and short out the circuitry.  That is unless the photo cell circuit quits working first, which also happens.
To build my own, I salvaged the fresnel lens from the failed unit, built a photo cell circuit (again with 4 white LEDs) and, with a plastic cover (it is the retaining knob for a household fan!), used silicone to seal everything.
So far it has outlasted the Davis lights ($39.99)!






While cruising in Malaysian waters we noticed that numerous fishing boats used flashing lights ... of many different colors.  Their nets were sometimes marked with flashing lights as well, though not often enough for our satisfaction.  Browsing the fishing supply stores we found numerous models of small flashing lights, both incandescent, strobe, and LED.  These lights are powered with either one or two flashlight batteries and incorporate a photocell switch.  After trying several brands I found one that has blue LEDs, runs on two batteries and last about three weeks.  The price we paid was RM18 (US$ 4.75). 
Here's one undergoing 'trials' along with my 'home brew' white anchor light.



The markings on this light are:
Yang Cheng
Made in China
ZL.02316935.6


The colored dot indicates the light color, in this case blue.





To avoid the use of flashlight batteries I constructed a simple voltage reducing circuit (one IC 7805 and three diodes 1N4001) to reduce 12 VDC to 3.2 VDC.  The circuit board and components fit inside the light housing with a power lead to the boat's batteries.  The low power consumption obviates the need for a heat sink.








The blue flashing light is now mounted just beneath the white one.  If we were to make an addition to the navigation light memory phrases, such as 'red over red the captain is dead' for a vessel not under command, ours would be 'blue under white that's our boat all right'!  Very useful after an evening ashore while finding your own boat in a dark and crowded anchorage !!!!!

Smooth out those transmission vibrations

The yacht Valhalla  has this installation of an anti vibration device. The picture say's it all.
aquadrive™  Installation  

Through the help of a friend I obtained an aquadrive that was in the estate of a yacht owner who died before the installation was done.  Follow the link for a complete description of this system but basically it is a double CV (universal) joint unit located between the engine transmission and a thrust bulkhead further connected to the propeller shaft.  The thrust bulkhead takes the force of the propeller instead of this force being transmitted to the engine mounts.
This is the completed installation:

Motor mounts: Soft motor mounts from Aquadrive provide freedom for the engine to vibrate without transmitting the vibration (and noise) to the vessel. The ones provided by Drivelines NW are exactly one-half the height of the Yanmar mounts for my 3GM30F engine. I had 'risers' fabricated locally to fill the space, which also allowed me to use the bolt hole spacings for the Yanmar mounts which are slightly longer than the Aquadrive mounts.

Adapter Plate: The one provided with the system I obtained was for another engine. I had an adapter place fabricated locally.

Thrust Bulkhead: This was the most critical piece of engineering and installation. The bulkhead must be installed a critical distance  behind the adapter plate, the rubber bushings between the aquadrive unit and the bulkhead must be at 15 mm under compression, and the thrust bearing (after end of the unit) must be in perfect alignment with the shaft going through the water (cutlass) bearing. The scarred area on the hull under the shaft is where a temporary bulkhead was installed to hold the shaft in alignment while the thrust bulkhead was fabricated and installed. The thrust bulkhead was fabricated from 1/2" King Starboard with 8 layers of fiberglass on each side for a total thickness of 3/4 ". As an aside, I had the help of a 5 foot tall Filipino fiberglass technician for this installation ... I COULD NOT have done it myself in the small space under the cockpit.

Shaft: My old shaft was pitted and in poor condition but I was lucky to obtain a used one from a friend who had upgraded from a 1 1/4" shaft to a 2" shaft. Although it was 35 years old it was in excellent condition and long enough to permit machining the ends to fit the coupling and the Autostream feathering propeller.

Permanent Shaft Seal (PSS): I opted to install a new PSS which is normally for a high speed vessel since it has a feed for water to be injected, in my case from the salt water drain of the heat exchanger. This ensures lubrication of the water bearing.
Sea trials have not been conducted other than moving from a nearby boatyard to our berth at the Subic Bay Yacht Club.  When interior varnishing is completed we will then have a chance to check out the expected improvements.
 

I need your help please

We are off cruising now for the next two years. Projects on my boat have started to come to an end. I'm hoping that some of you out there will contribute some of your projects to me to post here. My email address is in the header and that is the best way while out at sea.  I look forward to hearing from you and your boat project that show's your skill, thoughts, ingenuity, and generally just makes life simpler  while on board. Catch you later after a 12 day passage.

Fridge and Freezer Temperature Monitoring

We have recently changed our method (compressors and evaporator plates)  to our fridge and freezer. We wanted a reliable method to monitor the temperatures with out extra wiring. We have tried the manual thermometer, but found them less than satisfactory due to having to open up the boxes to read the temperature. We came across these wireless "indoor, outdoor temperature monitors" on ebay for a reasonable cost. This model has one LED monitor, with two sender units. It is able to monitor two temperatures at a time. We put one sensor in each box, and the LED monitor in the galley in a convenient place. They have been going two years with only one battery change. They measure about 2.75 inches square each.

Propane Tee Fitting

One thing lead to another with these boat projects. This blog is about linking three boat projects, and each one is worthy of it's own post. But for now, I'll give a precise of the  events.
Firstly, in the shower cubicle of the boat, I had a cupboard with a large 12 gallon hot water tank that I wanted to replace with a washing machine. So I set about removing the HW tank and then installing the washing machine. Because the doors were only 18 inches wide, the WM had to be disassembled to get through the door and then reassembled in-situ. This may become another blog at some time.
Now, because I had removed the HW tank and our only method of heating water, I then set about installing a califont, or probably better known as a "heat as you go, propane water heating unit". This was a unit sold in New Zealand, but I have seen similar units sold in Camping World in the USA. The igniter is powered by two "D" size batteries, and is small enough to install in boats and RV's.

I installed the unit under the aft vanity unit on a bulkhead. I have a means of varying the temperature output and have placed some blue masking tape for the shower temperature so that we don't need to use the mixer tap to get the temperature right. The ducting is 4 feet in length and vents to the bilge. Heat at the end of the 4 foot ducting is almost nil, and one can hold your hand over it easily. I saw many units installed on other boats with out the ducting to outside, and as others have said, "it's no worse than running the stove". Propane and co2 monitors are a safety measure. Now we have hot water on tap with no need to run the generator to supply power to the old HW tank.
Finally, when installing the propane califont, I had to install a propane hose to the unit. Initially, I "Teed" into the existing propane line with the one propane cut off switch to be used to supply both the califont and the stove. This however proved to be less than satisfactory, because the califont would remove some of the gas from the stove line while it was in use. This then made igniting the stove burners, a little more time consuming as we had to wait for the gas to flow back through the line to the stove.

New Brass T to Propane Tank

The solution was to use another solenoid and regulator for the new califont and "Tee" in both solenoid/regulators to that "Tee". Each solenoid has it's own on/off switch.
We also plumbed a hot water line to the aft of the boat so that we can have hot showers on the aft deck. We also think we will use less propane, than heating a kettle of hot water on the stove to do the dishes. I'll comment on that as data comes to hand.
The "T" also allows us to carry a spare propane tank to swap to when running out on the tank in use.