Tuesday, March 30, 2010

[Electric Boats] Re: Oops - toggle-switch guards

 

My normal cruising amp draw is 40amps, which gives about 4kts in calm. With seas and wind, figure 3. So I would have made the trip to the south bay and back at about 1.5 knots, butt-first...

> It would be interesting to see how you would go , working against the wind and tide .
> Have you tried it at all ?.
> Regards Rob J.
>
> --- In electricboats@yahoogroups.com, "aweekdaysailor" <aweekdaysailor@> wrote:
> >
> > Since my foibles are something of a running joke here, I thought I'd share some more.
> >
> > Yesterday I took the ebb tide all the way out the Gate (again!). On the way back in (dang, no whales) the boat lurched on a swell and I stumbled into my pedestal - where the toggle controlling fwd/rev sits. You guessed it - from fwd to rev in an instant. Suddenly my amp draw was way down..hmmmm...belt slipped off the pulleys. So now I'm outside the gate at slack tide, very little wind and no motor. Oh and I need to be home to babysit. Did I mention I was single-handing?
> >
> > Moral: Install a guard on your toggle switches...
> >
> > AND...my belt tensioning is a bit..um..crude. Basically my motor is mounted to a plate on one fixed pivot bolt, and the others can slide in a slot. Propshaft is on another plate. Move the plate, tighten the bolts, presto, belt is tensioned. To get at this though I have to crawl into a hole, lay sideways and sorta upside down. And I'm outside the Gate single-handing...with big ships going in and out fast. Not a good time to be upside down belowdecks.
> >
> > Enter the cam-lever. Snap it up, bolt is loose, snap it down, tight as can be - 10 seconds to reset my belt. Gotta get one. (A real belt-tensioner might be even better, but I've never been able to figure out all the parts involved @Grainger - anyone done this?)
> >
> > For those keeping score, that's about a 50mile round-trip and I used 110AH (@48v) of a 345AH pack (AH not Peukert compensated - guestimate ~130AH). Voltage under 20amp load reading 50.3 at start and 48.4 at end. About 50% usable wind and had the tide with me in both direction (4.7kt ebb, 4.2 flood). Took about 8 hours (when the wind was up I had close to 8kts SOG)
> >
> > -Keith
> > e-S/V "Aja"
> > San Francisco
> >
>

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