A stainless steel drawer pull works well (especially in pairs) to make a controlled access safety cage around knobs and switches.
It also looks very pro.
Available in most hardware stores. $8, buy stainless screws and washers too, and use a little Tefgel.
You might also consider reducing your current limit to just above cavitation at full stop, full throttle. An excessive current limit will over-stress drive components without increasing output. A current probe and field oscilloscope can provide this data with a single sweep of the throttle in the slip, or different levels of current limit can be programmed through trial and error. I'm in Marin, and would be glad to meet with you. I have the instruments, as well as the Sevcon PC-pack, and can adjust your controller. Please contact me off list.
Arby Bernt
AMeP
From: aweekdaysailor <aweekdaysailor@
To: electricboats@
Sent: Sun, March 28, 2010 3:48:18 PM
Subject: [Electric Boats] Oops - toggle-switch guards
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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