In this episode of Sailing A B Sea we get a boat job battery charging win and discover more issues along the way. Our boat job battery charging win comes aft...

Closed Captions (CC):
Well there are a couple of other jobs

- more than a couple - that we can be

cracking on with. A hose that we can

put back onto that aft head, the

breather hose for the holding tank. While

we're in that forward sail locker we can

start to trace the wiring back from the

bow thruster battery to find out why the

shore power is not sending a trickle

charge to the bow thruster battery.

First things first got to empty all the

contents of the locker. You always have

to do that with lockers. Oops, this tool's

up here for another reason which we'll

get into after we've done this

Well it's a quick change of clothing

because the shorts I had on were too

thick and heavy and I'm going in this

locker so I took my shirt off because

it's the hottest part of the day, there's

hardly any wind yesterday and we can

feel that Greek summer is just around

the corner. It's like an oven in there

Yeah first things first take the floor up

The battery's been in here for a couple

weeks now without a charge so I'm just

gonna see how it held up. 12.56

I think it was about thirteen

point something so we got twelve point

five six which is still good so it's

holding its own but we do need to

obviously find out why it's not getting

any charge from shore power. Yes so

basically we've got two lives comes to

here and disappear off back - into the nether

regions of the boat - and that will go to the circuit

breaker - yeah - for the bow thruster and then it

comes back so one of them is the power

feed and the other one is a recharging cable

Let's find out what's in this box

Actually it might not even be anything.

Where does it go? No

this box ain't got nothin to do with it because black goes all the way back there and

so does the ... these two reds

But we'll have a look in here

anyway because we've not looked in here

It's always good to know what you're working with

So would that, do you think that would be for the lights at the front?

Ah this would be for a lot of things at the front.

Ooh look at that there. What have you found?

Corrosion. Uh-oh

Good thing we looked hey? Yeah that's gonna need cleaning

Onvr again one boat job leads to another

Here on this terminal

we've got super bad corrosion so I'm gonna have

to take that apart, give it a good clean

and whack some Vaseline or some sort of

grease on it

Just asked Aannsha to

unplug us from the shore power and switch ...

isolate all the batteries so there

should be no power to here

What's happening Baz? Well, nothing's

ever simple so now I've got to have to

take this whole unit away so I can

get the nut bolt that holds onto the

back of this unit so I can get that out so I can clean it up

And as I suspected this

is held on with some sort of nut and bolt

situation but because all the cable

trunking is cable tied onto the bulkhead

I can't get my hand in behind there so

I just have to give myself some working

room basically. I can feel it but

I would imagine I'm gonna have to bring the others out coz

I'll never get it back on coz I've got no line of sight.

Well at least you've got plenty cable ties

I have

Well after all that huffing I've

managed to get the two nuts and

washers off this connection here and it

doesn't look that bad but they

definitely need cleaning up and you know

spraying with an anti-corrosion liquid

of some sort. So we'll go and do that, put it

back together and then carry on trying to

find out why this isn't getting a charge

which is what we came here for in the

first place! Here we are back in the

forward sail locker and I've cleaned up the

washers and nuts and they're not too bad

the corrosion wasn't as bad as it first

appeared so I can put these back into

their place and then I can put the cover

back on and then we can forget about

that and move on

Next!

Of course it's come to the end of

the day now we still haven't got any

further along with the job we came in

here initially to do and that was to

find out why the battery isn't beingcharged from shore power. Early start tomorrow I guess

Heather this washboard

makes washing laundry by hand so much

easier thank you

We're currently on shore power

as you can see and also we've got 13.8 volts

at our batteries and when we look

over here on our DC volts amps here we

have the setting for the battery starter

motor that's 13 point whatever it said

and here we have the batteries on board

13 point and whatever but the

battery auxiliary goes to zero so I'm

guessing that that is the battery for

the bow thruster. Now when we look in

here at our shore power battery charger

circuit three is flashing red circuit

two is fully green and circuit one is

looking a bit dodgy so what I'm going to

do is I am going to switch off shore

power, switch off the battery circuit

breakers and see if I can get inside

this unit and look at the wiring there

to see if there's anything visually

wrong that I can instantly fix circuit three with

In order to get full access to the

battery charger I need to take this

panel of wood off but this panel of wood

is held in at the bottom by the bench seat

base and the boat builders for some unknown

reason made this piece of wood one whole

section that I've got to remove in order

to get that little section of wood out

Here on this side they were quite clever

and they made a little divider so if I

wanted to get that off I'd only have

to take that bit off

I'm starting to sound like a whinging Pom now!

Well here's a little tip for you if

you own a Jeanneau Sun Odyssey 45.1

circa in 1995

Don't bother spending half an hour

taking all the screws out of the bench

base because they've also glued it down

and it won't budge

Well it looks like I can't get full

access to get into the battery charger

but I can see where the shore power

comes in on the left-hand side and over

here we can see where to red live

cables come in and one black neutral

cable so it appears that circuit three

is flashing because there's actually

nothing attached to it so I'm gonna

assume that the bow thruster battery

does not get charged from the battery

charger it probably only gets charged

when the engine is running and that's not

gonna be for a while. Oh well time to put

everything back together. Shore power is

back on and it looks like circuit one

and circuit two are now showing a full

green status and of course circuit three

is gonna flash red for the rest of it's life

That's not a bunch of ropes that's a

bunch of wires. What are you gonna do with that Baz?

I borrowed these from the workshop

on site and what I'm gonna do is I'm

gonna use these to extend the reach of

my multimetre cables because obviously a

multimetre has only about this reach and

the battery in the forward sail locker

obviously gets its charge from the

alternator when the engine is running

and right now the engine is not going

to be running for the foreseeable future

and I don't want that battery to go flat

I want to try and connect that battery

to get charge from our battery charger

when we're on shore power. In order to

find out where the lead from the battery

goes and ends up in the back end of the

boat I need to attach this cable, run it

through the boat, take it down to

underneath the companionway steps where

all of the black and red cables meet and

test each one until I find the one that

relates to that battery there.

That sounds easy doesn't it?

Well that was a

very quick job, I've found it already

Say that again, say it again!

That was a very quick job on a boat!!

So this one here if you

come close and you can have a listen

multimetre making a beeping noise ... so

this one's not, this one's not, this one

is and this one is. So both of those two

are somehow connected to the forward

battery, so I'll trace where both of

these wires go but basically all I have

to do is run a cable to the battery

charger around about this thickness I

would think and then get it connected to here or here

Once again I'm in the forward sail

locker and I've just put the battery

tester onto the battery and we've got

12.59 volts so now

we're going to use the walkie-talkie to

ask Aannsha to put the shore power on and

we'll see what we get

Okay flip that switch

Okay, flicked

All right just testing it now hang on

And bingo! I call that a bit of a win, we now

have this battery being charged by shore power

While I was in the forward sail

locker yesterday looking at the bow

thruster battery situation I also

noticed that the little plastic bottle

that holds the lubricating fluid for the

bow thruster has this metal ring that

attaches it to the bulkhead and one half

has completely rusted away and the other half

is ready to go so I think it's a trip

over to the boatyard workshop to see if

Manolis is around because he might be able

to manufacture one of these for us

Kalimera! Kalimara! Manolis, can

you make one of those?

You can make?

Okay okay

Well that was super

quick of Manolis manufacturing that

little piece of metal band. He's just

showed me the whole thing, it's super

flexible like the original was, he's just

got to drill out the screw holes now

and a little punch hole at the back end

where the band hooks onto the plastic

bottle. He says to come back later this afternoon and it'll all be done.

He's a pretty good fella

he knows his stuff

Manolis in the workshop here at the

boatyard came up with the goods check

this out it's almost a perfect replica

of the original piece

So I'm just gonna put that back on the little plastic tank

that holds the lubricant for the bow

thruster and tick that little job off the

list so that's great

And also thank you

to all of you who reminded me to put a

little bit of the diesel bug juice into

the jerry cans for the diesel that we

carry as spare on the either side of the

boat, it had slipped my mind so thanks

And there it is back in place

that should be good for quite some years

to come. Just on this edge here it's a

little bit sharp and a little bit longer

than you used to be so I've just bent

this edge back a little bit to make sure

it's not gonna have any rubbing against

the freshwater tank fill hose

Right next job we've also got the replacement

length of air breather hose that goes

to the black water holding tank

installed at one end

What's that man tool that you've got now Baz?

Our friends

Renate and Wolfgang who are on Meercat of Cowes, a catamaran just

over there kindly lent us this hot air

blower which will enable me to heat up

the pipes to easily get them back onto

the holding tank so thank you very much

for that and also I'll use this in

getting the pipes back on in the aft head

Okay we've got the tank back in position

I'm just going to make sure it is

secured and then once that's done we can

start heating up these pipes and

reattaching them where they should go

Yeah? Yes! Oh well done

It's a bit of a struggle

It's pretty warm in there especially

when you've got a 2000 watt heat gun

blowing away. Anyway that's the bottom

hose on, the outflow hose, and it means I can

stand up now I get at least a bit of a

breeze while I put the top three hoses on

Okay all the hoses back on

all the hose clamps are nice and tight

that means we can now put everything

that usually lives in this locker back

in this locker which frees up a lot of

space on deck, in the aft cabin and

basically and in the shower and basically

that means that this whole area is a job done

All right let's move the stuff

Well here we are coming up to the

middle of May and I can really feel the

heat of the Sun here in Greece as we get

closer and closer to the peak of summer

Of course a lot of you would be making

plans for your summer holidays if you're

allowed to travel and I know someone who

is allowed to travel that's our latest

patrons Ron and Debra. You guys enjoy

your motorcycle trip, we'll be following

thanks for giving us that link to follow

exactly where you are and we look

forward to seeing some pictures as well

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Stay safe out there