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
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