Transcript is auto-generated.
it's a good reminder you know i tell
this all the time you being first
uh on land is bragging rights yeah your
new phone
you this new tv new vacuum
new coffee machine whatever it is and
we're all humans it's almost sounds like
we're wired for
always better you know certainly a
portion of us but on a boat you know i'm
always tempering that with
do you there is a lot of cool things
about bragging about being an early
adopter absolutely
there's definitely going to be a
conversation uh you know
talker and people are going to want to
listen into your experiences but
do you want to live those experiences as
a voter
and and that's where i'm always a little
more concerned like
what are you are all the benefits that
you're going to get from this cool new
thing
are they going to outweigh the things
that none of us honestly as smart as
again it doesn't matter who you are
there's always unforeseen problems
um and the challenge is those can be
huge setbacks
huge setbacks not just financially it
could be losing a cruising season yeah
well
you only have five seasons the big
difference between me and uh
most other voters is that i can find a
way to write about
these things and make some money off
them yeah
i mean i wouldn't do it otherwise i'm
actually fairly conservative when it
comes to
equipment for the boat it's one thing
it's equipment to test
and it's a project uh and i'm gonna
pass that knowledge on and and somehow
or another i'm gonna generate some
income
off it it's a totally different thing if
it's equipment for the boat and i
wanted to live with it for the next
decade and then i get pretty
conservative
yeah yeah and and and and even
even myself doing this full-time you
know i'm talking like every living
moment
is boating that's it every there's
nothing else
i'm learning more that i never thought i
didn't know
every year every month and i'm like
those boats as they're getting more and
more cooler
with all these systems eventually you
almost it's not even needing a
technician you almost need a pseudo
tech you know someone who's looking
at the big picture
finding where the problems lie and then
figuring it out for you it's
it's it's it's it's not easy for
everyone some people it's too much
you know it's uh yeah it's just too much
yeah
so i've you heard about what about those
boaters that do have lithium because i
wanted to ask what your thoughts were on
this
some boaters that do have lithium are
now advocating you know the drop-in
replacement
uh agm starter they're putting battery
isolators on the alternator output
as a way to save the alternator when the
house battery decides to cut itself off
due to
a condition that made the bms say you
know what enough
for whatever reasons do you see any sort
of
staggered approach to lithium or do you
in your
i think um yeah if you've got a lithium
battery that does not
control the charging devices then uh
and and it's critical to the boat
operation of the boat
then i i think you do want to have a
mechanism to have a backup battery in
the system
and probably an agm battery i mean
you're going to have some issues
uh getting the right charging voltages
and so on but those are resolvable
uh and i think somewhere you want a
buffer battery in the
in the system just to protect yourself i
mean it would be better to go for
for for a proper system in the first
place you know a fully integrated
system and even better yet is to have
what they call a dual bus system
where you separate the charging side
from the
load side and then for example if the
the battery sees a an overcharged
situation it can disconnect the charging
devices and keep the load
system load side connected so you don't
lose the boat and in the other direction
if it sees an over discharge condition
it can disconnect the loads and keep the
charging devices connected but
yeah we see now you've got two buses
you've got a bunch of relays you've got
quite a bit of extra
kit and installation and expense
so it's i guess it's a question of your
your
level of paranoia yeah and how much
redundancy you want to build into the
system
but yeah if you've got no communication
between the battery and the rest of the
boat
then then i think some kind of a with a
lead acid
buffer in the in the system is a really
good idea yeah we're doing that now too
exactly so i mean the attempt you know
doing it right
there's there's two to me there's people
that can
that want to do it right and can afford
to right
i mean that's that's challenging either
both afford time or money
because both are variables that very few
of us have a lot of
and and then the question is okay maybe
you can't you know you can't you from a
time perspective
or a money perspective you can't you
know you agree
that it's the right thing and then it's
finding that compromise solution
that gets you mostly there but you have
to be
aware i i don't get my clients to sign
on the dotted line but you know i'm like
you know there's a dotted line here you
you understand the implications of your
choice right
and then you educate right make them
aware of what
could potentially happen because you're
right i've seen owners do drop-in
replacement
not do anything and literally exactly
like you said for whatever reason the
alternator got in an over
the battery didn't like the what the
alternator was doing after a long cruise
you know generally it doesn't happen
after an hour or two
a long cruise and motoring you know
which does happen in our area of the
world you know sometimes people will
murder for 10 hours a day on a sailboat
to get to their next destination
the winds are already coming in the
wrong place or there's no wind at all
and uh then the whole boat goes dark
and that must be pretty actually i'm i'm
surprised that we haven't had mobile
fires uh in the early days of lift your
mind we had some fairly dramatic
fires um and i
i've been expecting as we get more and
more of these
drop-in batteries that we would see more
issues like this but um it's still at a
pretty low
incident level which is good it means
that
the bms's we've got are pretty effective
but what we don't know is how many of
those batteries have disconnected at
really inconvenient moments
yeah because you know what the fire we
know about because
it hits the headlines the disconnect at
an inconvenient moment we're not going
to know about
yeah i you know those are the ones where
the owner honestly
comes back and generally i mean most
boat owners again
you know they fall on their sword
literally they start off the sentence
like listen
you told me you know this is me
following my sword come back on board
you know i've given it back the battery
i've sold the battery
i want other batteries because again
they're not willing to go all
out you know it's easier when you do a
boat from scratch and sometimes we get
to do that
it's easier at the beginning you know
you design everything from scratch
you know there's less obstacles in your
way you make the place you need you size
everything up
everything from day one is done with
where you're gonna go
it's retrofitting um quickly
to lithium which is most often than not
disappointing i tell people
there's no quick and easy with lithium
you want quick and easy right
but yeah so and again coming back to
something i said earlier it's an energy
storage system it's not a battery
yeah it has to be seen as part of all of
the energy systems on the phone
and the mistake is to think of it as a
battery because it isn't yeah well it is
and it is
i mean especially now that you have a
computer on top
as you what have you tested lithium when
they get flooded it goes again jeff
sorry hey don't race
no he's at all i'm surprised i haven't
sneezed already it's june here
right yeah um have you
what happened have you seen a lithium
battery on a boat
uh be submerged underwater dude maybe
you know rogue wave or anything like
that or floating and you know
um of course if it's salt water you're
going to get a lot of um shorting
between the terminals
yeah because it's conductive if the
water gets in the case you know i'm not
sure
uh well you know with a lead acid
battery you you can get chlorine
from the electrolyte i'm actually not
sure what happens with lithium ion
yeah i don't i because with a sailboat
you know
it's it's more likely in a sailboat than
a powerboat
uh to have flooding in the boat yet the
boat that's still being
safe yeah and the boat is you know
there's nothing wrong with the boat and
once you get the water out
you know the boat is i i do know of one
or two instances where
water has got to the bms and the bms has
failed
uh and it hasn't shut the battery down
and and then we've had a cell go into
the thermal runaway and then it
propagates to other cells so then the
battery melts down
and then that you lose a vote at that
point well no the reason we know about
these is because
because they didn't lose the boat with
the battery melted down without losing
the boat but typically speaking you're
right
once the battery goes up you lose the
bomb yeah
interesting um yeah and i know uh one
company were pretty well known brand
they had two or three
of these uh battery failures where
water got into bms and then the
batteries went into
thermal runaway and the battery was able
to contain the thermal runaway because
they were pretty well built
well not without wrecking the battery
okay let's change gears a little bit i
want to
go into a little bit in your thoughts on
solar over the years
where do you see solar panels solar
array for voters oh
solar is you know it's the last decade
the uh efficiency of the the uh solid
crystal panels monocrystal
monocrystalline or polycrystalline has
gone up by 50
and the prices come down so you know 10
years ago
you might buy the amorphous the sheet
style
silicon because it was cheaper and and
the
differential in terms of efficiency was
not that great but now
the the uh amorphous has stayed more or
less the same
the monocrystalline the polycrystalline
has gone up and up
prices come down uh there's no reason to
buy that
um those cheap amorphous crystalline
amorphous panels anymore
uh and then within the the uh
crystalline world
we've got the sun power cells you know
have always been considered to be the
best in the market the maxion cells they
call them they're the ones that are
completely black
rich structure on them yeah that's how
you can tell they're the only ones like
that
and then recently we've had these cells
coming out of panasonic
they call them hit cells hit i can't
remember what the acronym is for
they're just as efficient as the maxion
cells in fact a little bit more
efficient
and and if you combine them with a grid
structure that's come out of a company
in california they call it the
mtat grid i don't know if you've seen
it's
instead of having a regular uh
bus bars which then connect from one
cell to the next
those cell connections are the weak link
in a lot of other arts they fracture
and then you know they've got these wavy
thin wavy copper grits that come
to an interconnection with hundreds of
little wavy
so they're like little springs so when
you get thermal expansion and
contraction or a little bit of flexing
or movement
it absorbs all of that and you combine
those
panasonic spells with that empty grid
structure and you've got a panel
that i think is is significantly better
than anything we've had on the market
before and they only became available
last year
and they're the sr plus panels from
salbian
yeah i think i've installed those on my
own boat
yeah and uh they're also they're made in
california
uh they put them on uh over the road
trucks where you know they're on the
roof
they're doing 70 miles an hour the
hurricane force winds
driving exactly yeah it's all on roads
so it's a pretty rugged environment
um so they're very well made uh i want
some of those on my boat
i've got some ten-year-old um kyocera
rigid panels oh yeah those were very
those were big
back then they were number one
yeah well you know i was getting uh
the peak efficiency in those days was
like 16
and uh now we've got 23 24
so now those are that um uh screen that
melissa just put up
that looks like the uh the one it tells
with the mtac grid because you can
actually see
in the picture of the grid structure but
if there's no grid in there then it's
going to be the um
the maxion cells from some power but i
think those are actually the
the uh panasonic hit cells so that
that's a terrific technology the problem
as you know jeff is we have no standards
for marine
solar panels if you put a solar panel on
your house it has to be tested to pretty
rigid
standards and it has to be labeled as
such
and it has to guarantee 80 something
percent of its output after 25 years
and so on the minute you take that panel
and put it on a boat
all of the guarantees and the warranty
is gone
and in the boat world you know we we
have a bunch of inferior
cells when they make these cells they
chop a slice of silicon up
and then they test every slice and the
super efficient ones go in one bin
and the not so efficient ones go in
another bin and the lousy ones go on a
third bin
they're still all you know sun power
cells
so somebody can go buy a bin full of the
lousy cells
and make a solar panel and call it a sun
power
maxim cell that's what it is it does
they don't tell you though it's a
fifteen percent efficiency on another 24
efficient cell right oh and we get a lot
of that in the boat world with these uh
cheaper panels
inferior cells poor construction no
warranty
that's worth talking about so it's
really important
in to pay a bit extra for a panel
from a recognized brand that has a
decent warranty
i tell that all the time you know
there's no way you know
it's funny we we've seen it all and you
know even on my own boat uh
my my my sailboat i put in the sun power
i think eight years ago when i met bruce
i was nine years ago
and uh you know honestly they're just
bulletproof
they're just bulletproof they're just
yeah so you buy a cheaper panel for half
the price
and you've got to replace it after two
years and you have to pay the
replacement costs along with the new
panel what have you sent
but you've got all that hassle yeah
yeah it's it's sad
but it happens you know and the
challenge is we're all we're all
inclined to save money as voters you
know
voting we're reminded all the time i
hear this all the time like oh it's not
an investment
i'm like neither is your vacation no
nobody goes on a vacation and says oh
yeah my roi i'm going to sell my
vacation after i've been to someone else
i'm like no no
it's an experience you know not all
things are measured in money
right certainly boating like a vacation
that you put money in
what you get out is not money out it
isn't an investment
it's an experience it's either you know
time by yourself some of my clients want
to just go out and they want to be
literally them versus the world on the
water you know and i mean i'm like kudos
there's other people that want to be
there with family and friends
uh you know and it's all part of that
journey
that you want is to have a reliable boat
experience but some of us
are forced to maybe make decisions we
don't want to or we hope to be true
and my wife keeps complaining because
i've got a uh
200 rv tv
which i i use as my cockpit repeater for
the navigation system
because you know you get a big screen
for two hundred dollars yeah
and as opposed to paying three thousand
dollars for a marine eyes
you know her repeater but unfortunately
you can't dim it properly at night
so it springs not the night vision so so
she's been
complaining for for years about that but
that thing is now
i think eight years old and it's still
working so it's it's proved to be pretty
rugged
that is pretty good you know eight years
out in the elements yeah that's very
good
what about wind turbines what's your
take on um because you cruise in the
caribbean here in the pacific northwest
with the massive trees that we have that
are you know 200 300
feet tall to the edge of the anchorage a
lot of the anchorages
are pretty low wind uh
in the pacific north because they're
also most of them are 360 almost
so you don't get it might be blowing 20
30 knots but in anchorage
you know that the wind doesn't drop um
to get you so what what's your thought
in the caribbean and for people are
cruising in terms of
uh wind generators well we've always had
one
and there are times when we've been
anchored behind a reef in the caribbean
with a 15 knot trade wind and it keeps
up with
the energy needs on the boat but those
are pretty rare
um so i don't when i'm doing my energy
calculations
i don't include the wind generator i
just see it as a bonus
uh for example when we were excuse me
again my nose is itching like crazy
[Music]
when we were um into makes you human
nigel makes you human
it's just a reminder for the rest of us
something has really stirred it up
um we're here we spent three summers on
the west coast of scotland
okay we had an average of a gale a week
we had almost no sun because the
weather's miserable in scotland the
cruising was wonderful
but even with all those gales because
we spent most of our time hiding from
gales and protected anchorages
our solar with very little sun still
outperformed the wind generator two to
one
wow we have 340 watts of solar and then
we have you know an air marine or
air x or whatever wind generator yeah
and the solar was still a better
investment way better investment than
wind generation
yeah we're the same so it to me it's
sort of
my order is do what you can with the
alternator
you know within reason go you know high
output
you know again if you've got uh v belt
up to a certain max
generally about 90 then it's like okay
if you can get dual v belt you can go
higher but then
doing the tension is a problem either
serpentine kit
high output alternator external
regulator that to me is sort of
a good sort of especially for sail
boaters i'm like at least when you're
running your engine make use of it
yeah and then the next step is solar can
i tell people solar you're not going to
regret it
yeah and then if that's not enough and
you have a place to you know
some people have these beautiful radar
arches and you know there's places where
they've got you know a sailboat rig
that they can put a a little wind uh
generator on one of their mast
then i say that's sort of then your
third step and after that then it's uh
some people do toe generators have you
done toe generators on your boat
uh no uh it's um
it's just the hassle of deploying them
and pulling back well of course now
you've got the flip down
type yeah like the walton sea
yeah that's right but for ocean passages
uh
they're pretty good but they're also as
you know very expensive uh
for coastal cruising uh you know but
if you're only out for an hour or two
and you're hoping from one anchorage to
another
it's a lot of money for not a whole lot
of energy so
uh we we haven't bothered plus you know
because i've got these super high
powered alternators and stuff i've been
testing for years we've actually never
had an energy issue
uh since we started doing this stuff
yeah uh with the with the solo the other
key issue is to put an individual
regulator on every panel
because we have all these shading issues
on boats
and uh it really maximizes the output of
the panels
i i remember doing that honestly
everything i don't know what it is
it's just i don't know if i must have
learned everything from you but
i remember i did that on my solar weight
six panels six controllers 450 watts
it was three one hundreds three 350
and the numbers that i was getting out
of that array 450 watt going into a 12
volt battery bank
and uh i have an instantaneous amp meter
telling me what the output is
because i'm a geek you know you got to
know this right you got to justify
you got to justify the purchase to
yourself and others and uh i've seen
outputs up to 30 amps coming up from a
450 water rate
in the pacific northwest so excited that
i take pictures
like i'm like literally it's sort of
like my version of like oh my god
look there's an elf take a picture i'm
like 30 amps unbelievable 25 sustained
then i start taking videos
i'm like look at that 25 sustained i'm
like that's more than
uh like the output of uh an alternator
without the engine running it's nice
the other aspect to this is if you've
got lead acid batteries which most
people still do
um it's going to maintain the batteries
in a higher average state of charge
that's going to greatly extend their
life expectancy and if it also
at the same time gets rid of the
salvation issues and and
stops you from having to run your engine
at anchor to do that final charge to get
rid of salvation
there's uh there's a huge benefit in
terms of cost savings in battery
replacement
big time big time big time and you know
we did a boat last summer where mind you
we didn't do the install the install was
done by the owner uh the owner
you know again anything's doable if
you're if you're geeky you know and you
want to do it right
anybody can self-teach themselves
anything i think i mean it's just a
question of putting the time in
this owner did the whole project himself
52-foot powerboat
ended up putting i don't know something
like
almost 20 solar panels i think it was 20
solar panels on top of a rigid
hardtop huge array i mean the array must
have been
2500 or i don't know 3 000 watts
and that owner could actually run a
52-foot powerboat
for the summer without ever running the
generator or running an alternator
like he was an off-grid home effectively
he could do washing machine uh dryer
like i'm talking running the boat like
the whole
boat without any sound
at all i mean that's that's just the
dream i mean that's
that's heaven right there yeah it's
amazing solar is not a gimmick but we're
big proponents of it here
i want to talk about another project
i've been involved with tell us
please please uh vote how to oh yeah
that was on my list
yeah that's about sharing knowledge tell
me about that yeah we've been
i've been working with a couple of uh
guys in germany
uh they got a hold of me uh one of them
is the
like the german nigel holder he's got a
bunch of books on
diesel engines and electrical systems
and so on and the other guy is a
phd computer whiz and a boater he's
living on his boat
and he runs an online um boat store
and uh so we've been putting together
this
electrical education series we've been
working on it for a year now
and we're about to go live with it
probably in
at the end of june though i say so
myself i think it's the most
comprehensive
electrical education marine electrical
education that's available
anywhere so we start really from basics
from electrons
from vaults and amps and watts and we
work our way up to a full
system design but we go via
installations and all of those
important issues like not putting the
stainless steel washer in the wrong
place
and making sure you do decent
terminations sizing the cables right
putting the heat shrink on so so we go
through all of the
the the bits and pieces and the nuts and
bolts of putting a system together
and then we end up basically looking at
how to
figure out your energy needs and and
size the battery bank and
decide whether you want lithium ion or
lead acid and what size alternator you
need and so we go through all of those
pieces and that's the
and then we actually show people how to
to develop a wiring diagram for their
boat which is something that a
awful lot of us don't have from the
manufacturer which we actually all need
and we've got some free software you can
use to do that create your own wiring
diagram
size the cables properly figure out
where to put fuses determine what sizes
they need to be
so it's pretty comprehensive from
education system
we're going to do basically online
seminars
on a subscriber basis i i you know i'm a
huge i mean over the years what i've
learned
is that and this on this very topic is
that
you know one must first learn before
they do right uh
and and there's nothing wrong with not
sure i think you have to learn and do at
the same time
yeah okay i guess you got to practice
you can read
yeah it's true yeah so you do it
there's something you just read that you
didn't realize the significance of it
no 100 percent yeah yeah it has to go
the two things have to go together yeah
i i normally you know there's some
voters out there that are gonna
not everyone's gonna tackle the install
all by themselves
but the flip side is you know the
knowledgeable voter
that knows what should be done can
really assess
quickly if the people that are on board
because maybe they don't have the time
or they don't feel that they know
exactly what they're doing
you know the education part is huge
because then you can start assessing
if the people around you uh that are
helping you out
are knowledgeable and then you can start
figuring out you know your own little
like you say your own little labs
and start doing but doing in the right
way because you
actually are applying knowledge that you
weren't as opposed to just
figuring it out as you go along without
any manuals
yeah yeah i also believe that if you
put enough effort into this you can do a
better job
than most marine electricians just
because of the
the lack of training opportunities that
we discussed at the beginning of this
um but on the other hand as we
say a couple of times in our
presentations if you're having trouble
following what we're saying take the
message
you shouldn't be doing this yourself you
don't get somebody that knows what
they're doing
because if this stuff is difficult and
you can't master it you should not be
working on your own bone
because you must like you just screw it
up and it's going to cost you a bunch of
money and frustration
so even uh you know even at that point
if you feel like
uh the lesson was kind of wasted it
hasn't been wasted because you've
learned a very important lesson which is
maybe you're not quite up to it yet you
need to work a bit harder before you do
something
and and you're right you know i tell
this all the time you know
it's it's a little bit you know
electrical is a perfection business
you know there's no i tell this to every
new employee that comes on the team
i don't you know doing 99 things right
and one thing wrong is one thing wrong
too many
it's you can't you know it's it's like
you can't
undersize a wire and not have the proper
fuse you do that
you could lose the bow you you just you
you have to strive for perfection
and if you're not going to give that
then you're taking on undue risk
if you're just hoping that things will
work out
and that's the challenge that we all
have to do not all you know it's like
being a carpenter you can have a table
and it's crooked
in the day it's just aesthetics you know
people are going to make you laugh
like like woodworking you know they're
going to say well this table is not as
pretty as it could be
but with electrical it's not just
aesthetics it's actually
safe you know functionality yeah that's
a big thing
a big thing um and i think a course like
this where i think it's really useful is
a lot of us like you say
aren't in these sort of voting meccas
you know where there's
deep knowledge like here in the pacific
northwest we're lucky
you know there's a lot of people i'm not
just talking to vancouver i'm talking
about all
puget sound seattle anacortes
bellingham port townsend i mean it's a
basin of voters and so there's a lot of
us that make a life
out of there you know some of my team
members 20 years yeah then you're gonna
you know regardless what you learn in
school or not if you're learning on the
job you're going to be pretty good
but there's a lot of places they don't
have those folks you know they're
they're a voter and there's not that
many people that are specialists
and i think that's where there's so much
to be learned
from uh these online courses like the
boat how to
i think you know whatever money you put
out you're gonna get
in target reaping rewards or financial
returns that's where
the x factor is going to be multiples
multiples
multiples by educating learning
and doing yeah big time classic
thing is uh we could all put less stuff
on our boats
we you know we've made this this uh
complicated when we didn't have to when
i first went
boating when you first went boating uh
we accepted that being on a boat was
just a form of camping out
so now we all want all the bells and
whistles
if we were willing to give up some of
those bells and whistles we'd make it a
whole lot easier for ourselves
nobody's willing to i'm not nobody else
is winning too
so then we have to figure out how to do
it right yeah that's right it's there's
those creature comforts like
refrigeration
is a big one i mean that's that's the
biggest one so
on the course what do you see sort of
the the
fundamental path for most people that
are voters and learning
on that course you know like tell us a
little bit about the journey there's a
lot of different modules tell us a
little bit about what does the journey
look like
on the course is it so if like
self-guided
how do you gauge your your you know oh
so uh progress uh
the subscribers all have access to it
unlimited access so you can do it at
your own pace
um we start as i say from basics
electrons
bolts and so a lot of people that stuff
will already be familiar they might want
to just skip that
but uh my recommendation is is actually
to work through it because the piece is
all built on each other
and then we work up to to installations
and making sure that all the bits and
pieces are done right the cables are
sized properly it's the right
cable the right terminals and so on and
then we we look at
batteries charging systems the nuts and
bolts that we've discussed
today and how these pieces all need to
fit together
to have a functioning system that meets
the bone owner's needs
because the other problem we've all got
is you buy a car it's one of a million
and the the car manufacturer knows what
the duty cycle is going to be for that
car
because basically they're all the same
you buy a boat
it's exactly the same as your neighbor's
boat in the marina but you use it
differently
so we all have to go through this
exercise
of figuring out how the way we use that
but what kind of loads it's going to put
on the
systems and the electrical system and
every single
boat even if it looks just like the boat
next to it is unique
i agree with that exercise which the
boat builder obviously couldn't do
unless we do that exercise and then
balance out the pieces
we're not going to have a boat that's
optimized for the way we use it
so then we walk everybody through that
exercise and hopefully and we've got a
really nice
planner where they can put all the loads
in and it'll tell them what size battery
bank they should have at which point
they're going to find
that they don't have enough batteries on
the boat and then we we tell them well
you know maybe if they're not willing to
pay for more batteries
or not willing to do this or that or the
other then you know
maybe these are going to be the
consequences and maybe you want to live
with that
but so we do we walk everybody through
that exercise until we get to a to a
fully
optimized boat and that's basically
journey
right what's that it's a journey that
that whole education
it's an exercise and it's not something
you can do in 20 minutes
no well i don't know how many hours of
videos we've got there but it's quite a
few
and then for everyone we've got it in
text as well because
um you know some people learn from
videos some learn from text
you can stop it at any point in time or
back it up go to the text read the text
so that whatever your learning
pace or style is hopefully we can
accommodate it
and then we're expecting a ton of
feedback
so we'll have a means of responding to
that because we're going to learn in the
process you know this is a learning
process for us as well
so we'll i'm we'll be fine-tuning this
thing for the next 10 years i expect
yeah it's the same thing you know like
that's one of the reasons why we do
youtube's is
you end up seeing the questions that
come out of you saying something
and the clarifications that are required
or the things that you said in a way
that
then convey the message either
intentionally or unintentionally
and you know as a teacher you you learn
so much if you're listening yeah you
know through the questions
the questions are
i thought we were done with the the load
planning exercise
so i was playing with some numbers in it
and
as you know but most of our listeners
will not there's two types of efficiency
when it comes to batteries and
electrical systems as there's coulombic
efficiency and amperes and there's
energy efficiency with waterhouse
so we've been trying to build in
some kind of formula to where we can
accommodate both of them because
actually it's more useful to think in
terms of energy efficiency than
than economic efficiency which is what
we've historically used in the boat yes
so and i discovered last night we've got
a floor in the planet
so yeah this has been quite a learning
exercise for me
so when we get off this cold today one
of the things i have to
do is go back into that thing and see if
i can figure out how to solve this
this floor in a way that doesn't
overcomplicate the whole system
yeah did you find i mean it's related i
think it goes back to same thing when
i'm preparing for presentations
um we learn so much from trying to
prepare
content oh yeah and i put i mean hours
and days and weeks into
i've got some electrical classes that i
i probably have
months of time actually invested and
every time i do it
i go home when i spend a day or two
revising it because of the questions or
the comments or the feedback
um yeah i mean it's a learning process
from both sides
and it's never going to stop no
that's the that's the beautiful part
about it
that's why i mean i personally go
through all the youtube questions it's
sometimes overwhelming but i'm like this
is where i see where the message
didn't resonate where i wasn't able to
articulate
an idea in a way that they were either
receptive
you know and not making it polarizing
too because i mean
unfortunately a lot of things in life
are polarized these days
and uh with photoelectrical you know
that's the one thing i try to keep is
like
there's no such thing as a perfect boat
there's no such thing as a perfect
system there's no such thing as
perfection
it's always these compromises and the
journey to get to the most healthy
compromise
for your boat like you say which is
important not every boat is
even identical bolts aren't the same
because we use them very differently
or most of us do um yeah it's um
so tell me a little bit about now
obviously writing the books doing this
course
what does it mean for you because i know
a little bit why i do it
but there's certainly a sense of
community when we're out voting right
like
voters in a marina boaters in anchorage
voters in general
seem to want to help one another it
seems to be that
the things that we got taught as kids
from our parents about the community
tell me a little bit about what you're
doing you know again through this boat
how to and your books and
what does it mean for you helping out
all these other voters because you've
made an impact
on here testify myself and on so many
others so
yeah tell me a little bit about that
well it is a community
and uh by and large it's a really
wonderful community
and there is a real um generous
spirit you almost never
meet a boater that especially when
you're out cruising
that you feel is really obnoxious yeah
um as i say i started on the book
journey and the technical journey
because i figured if i needed that
information somebody else needed it
so that was the starting point but then
what it's done over the years
is uh generate initially a pretty small
income but it's grown to where
i've been able to make a living of this
and the way i
look at it is it's a symbiotic
relationship i have the opportunity
to do the homework for my readers
and then they buy whatever i write maybe
a magazine i write for all my books
and enable me to continue to doing do it
so i've had a wonderful
life in which i basically pursued my
hobby for 40 years
and because of those people that buy
whatever i i produce
they've enabled that lifestyle and my in
return
i'm hoping that i've improved their
lifestyle and that we've got this
relationship that we can keep going
where both sides benefit from it
and yeah we're basically part of a
community where we're we're all pulling
together in the same direction
do you i mean uh just want to plug your
book by the way i just i have to say it
um for people out there the voters that
aren't
familiar with that book that book is
uh it's a bible it's been rated as such
i it could be it could literally that
whole book could be
a four-year university technical
course you call what you want every
single chapter is
gold i you know i've reread some
chapters 10 times i reread one of your
paragraphs nigel like
oh that that goes back to what you were
saying about you've got to do
to understand there's there's a certain
element in life where you can't just
observe you have to get it you know and
and i'm like oh that's what he meant in
that sentence
and you read that sense the first time
and you're like well okay sure yeah okay
yeah
you know you read again five years later
after living the the nightmare
you're like oh that's what it meant so
the book i think is also
i mean i have a copy at home and i have
a copy of my sailboat um
that if you anybody who wants to geek
out and generally people that geek out
or the ones that have had problems on
their boats and they want to
reduce those problems so voting is more
pleasurable
uh that book is also a great starting
point as well thank you
i actually i was just working on a piece
on corrosion
and i was reading my own book and i
thought you know this is pretty good how
the hell where did i get all this from
because i wrote much of that stuff with
some of it so
yeah years ago now that's amazing
uh the one two topics i want to talk
about just before we've got another few
we got a little bit of time
um can you tell me a little bit i get
this all the time from voters on youtube
uh about lightning protection we don't
have lightning strikes that often here
in the pacific northwest in my area it
happens but
honestly a lightning strike on the coast
is
not every day it's not every week it
could be
months you know literally months and
months without lightning
on the coast so we don't deal with the
consequences
but in the caribbean in florida and
places like that there are so tell us a
little bit about
you've got a whole chapter on that tell
us a little bit about lightning strikes
oh yeah
my brothers got hit on the hard
it vaporized the masthead vhf antenna
and it blew out every piece of
electronic equipment on the bone and the
alternator and they break the batteries
um and uh the actual repair pair bill i
mean he had insurance but the repair
bill was thirty thousand dollars
oh yeah on a 40-foot boat and he had
persistent problems for a long time
afterwards
with little things that would fail uh
you know months later and almost
certainly related to that strike that
got stressed out by it
so i mean the the theory is the same as
on our houses if you've got
some pointed metal object that's
sticking up higher than the boat
and you've got a direct path to ground
with a heavy copper cable
the ground being the water around the
boat um
you can at least contain um the strike
to where it's not going to blow a hole
in the boat or kill somebody
but that also presumes that all of the
the major metal objects on the boat are
tied into that
circuit and also grounded to the water
because uh what happens you get very
high induced voltages on
rigging and wiring in the boat and and i
mean
hundreds of thousands of votes were
talking and if you get
that and those devices are not all tied
together and grounded together
uh you'll get arcs from
one to the other and if a person is in
the path of that arc i
mean years ago i got some photographs of
somebody that was
caught in a park like that it didn't
kill them
but there were all these like little
blood spots all over the
his body where the lightning strike had
gone through and come out the other side
and destroyed his nervous system um this
was like two years later
he had to sit in a darkened room he
couldn't go out in the daylight
and you know nobody could figure out a
way to help him
get over this but so i mean that's a
pretty extreme case but
so the theory is so we have the the down
conductor
to an immersed metal plate of some sort
of keel or
a separate metal plate and then we have
all of these other metal messes on the
boat tied together with a bonding
conductor
we call this a bonding conductor and
that's also grounded to that metal plate
so if we get that strike and we get
those high induced voltages
they all get taken to ground when we
don't get these massive voltage
differences
within a foot or two within the boat it
will cause these a side arch
and now these drinks you're doing stays
and shrouds you're also
i mean yep these are all you know the
abyc
wants to see all large metal masses on
the boat
tied together anyway for safety
protection
with respect to an ac system and let's
say for example
we're at the dock we're operating an
angle grinder
and on a tank and the cable
drags across the corner of the tank
there's a sharp
edge and it cuts through there so now
the tank is life what's that tank
we can get electrocuted but if that tank
is grounded
you know it has a longing cable even
though it's not part of any electrical
circuit because it's grounded back
the fault current it's called will go
through that grounding cable and if it's
a dead shore
which it now is because we've actually
got that hard connection to the tank
it'll trip the breaker on the dark or in
the boat um
so uh so the aby c wants to see all
large metal masses on the boat
bonded and grounded one way or another
anyway not
for ac safety not for lightning
protection but by doing that we also
provide that bonding connection
that we want to keep everything tied
together for a lightning strike
and again if we put a lot of electronic
equipment on the boat we're going to get
some high
voltages through the system momentarily
it's probably going to
blow the electronics but we do have
surge protection devices you know
at home where we have those um strips
that we plug our computers into
the protection device
well we've got we can put those into the
ac system because
they're very widespread and they might
protect the
ac equipment there are similar devices
now for dc
circuits that we can wire into our
panels and for
individual bits of kit that may save the
equipment
but most of us don't do that on the dc
side especially
in which case uh in a direct strike uh
we won't lose the boat
nobody's going to get killed but we may
lose the electronics
yeah and that's why people talk about on
long passages having almost a little uh
bag in the oven yeah a faraday cage or
something you know
it's almost impossible in a direct hit
to protect the electronics on the boat
and the other way we we
if we're plugged in at the dockside and
there's a nearby strike
we can get voltage spikes coming down
the the ac wiring from the dock
with hundreds of thousands of volts and
they'll come onto the boat
through the shore power cord i've seen
that happen and they'll blow out all the
electronics on the boat
yeah we were we were involved uh
rewiring a 75-footer that sailboat that
hit one of these mega power lines
yeah in a river here and
it actually blew the boat up yeah they
didn't lose the boat
uh but what you talked about they were
cap i mean this is a 75 foot
high end i'm not going to name the map
and this is i mean this is
sort of the end state of perfect
i mean this is as close to perfect again
a swedish boat
pretty close to perfect um and literally
every single exactly we we were lucky i
mean although everything electrical had
to be replaced there is nothing salvaged
yeah um you know the panel had to be
completely redone
and the arcing was insane uh cabinets
like that
blown out the lightning protection
system
wouldn't have saved the boat you know
because you've got in a lightning strike
you've got a momentary massive
voltage and current spike but in that
case you're up against
the conductor and you've got probably
thousands of volts and thousands
uh on an extended basis yeah
it uh it was crazy literally like you
said there were literally
cabinets that literally were thrown
across the room
yep literally literally vape i'm talking
about how wooden cabinets just
thrown the other side of the room yep
doors
exploding through like off the hinges
like it was a life event
it was a life event and that's from
amazing it was fun
but that's from hitting the air you know
you get this
instantaneous um you know from all of
the electrical stuff that's that's
suddenly
melting down you get these very high
temperatures and the air expands
we had a when we were a few years back
we had a house up the road from us
uh in a lightning storm and the
lightning hit a tree next to the house
ran the ground because you could see it
blew the bark off the tree
you could see where it ran across the
ground it went into the basement in the
house
uh it heated the air in the house uh so
much so they blew the front door out of
the house
with a tremendous bang the door came out
with the frame
straight out of the house with a big
bang nobody got hurt
can you imagine our ancestors living
that like 500 years ago
a thousand years ago they're like okay
there's magic in the air
there's guaranteed you know what
happened you know the shamanism
starts right there you're like that's it
there's what's the explanation
god is angry who are we gonna sacrifice
oh 100
can you imagine i mean that would be a
life event let's take a few minutes
another big one too that we get and it's
related to this is this concept of
grounds
um you know especially bonding you know
for through house underwater through
walls i've read your work on this
uh inspired a lot i mean that's that's
my philosophy so
i'm definitely i i there's definitely
different sides of the coin um but you
know at the end of the day reading
through the rationale of different sides
but tell me a little bit about
your philosophy certainly it seems to
align with abyc
about grounds on boats specifically ac
ground
dc grounds chassis grounds um
and then even bonding grounds lightning
grounds rf grounds
you know a few minutes tell us a little
bit about your philosophy with grounds
well as you know one of the more common
corrosion problems comes with the shore
power cord
that's when you plug in the the
grounding wire the green one
uh is is connected to the boat next to
you and the one on the other side
and um and it's also connected through
your bonding system
on most of our boats to the underwater
hardware
and uh so then you've created a massive
effectively battery
so one piece of metal is going to get
eaten up to protect the others and if
if yours happens to be lower in the
galvanic series it's your boat is going
to protect
all the rest of them so so we have that
problem we solved that one with
galvanic isolators or isolation
transformers
so anybody with a short power circuit
that
regularly plugs in they should have a
galvanic isolator or an isolation
transformer
without question yeah we we recommend
especially for boats that uh are either
european coming to north america or
north america or going to europe
for the ones that don't want to change
everything over and the boat is mobile
you know because these chargers can take
from like 90 to 250 volt input
they can take 50 hertz 60 hertz i mean
the only thing you have to do is just
anywhere in the world you know we can
plug in in europe we can plug in the
states
uh single quarter inlet because the the
battery charger
doesn't care so we basically we have a
universal short power capability that's
right
yeah but of course if we had a ton of
air conditioning on the boat
um that battery charger would be maxed
out we'd meet them we'd need a much
bigger shore power cord
and maybe two or three battery chargers
but you can still do the same thing
yeah same thing in in the pacific
northwest the issue is running heaters
uh when you're connected to shore power
not everyone has diesel g and so then
you're running a bunch of heaters and
you're drawing 30 40
you know something 50 amps at 120 to run
heaters on a boat
you can't run that effectively through i
mean you could through a charger but now
you're getting
through problems of you're gonna need to
stack multiple chargers
uh because obviously the efficiency you
know to run you know a short
a charger to run 30 amps continuous
you know the inverter can handle it but
your battery bank generally is not going
to be able to handle that continuous for
24 hours a day
so then leaving that issue aside um
we've got on the boat we've got a bunch
of metal through holes on most of our
boats unless we've got maryland
um and if if they're a high-end bronze
silicon bronze or something like that
there really is no need
to time to a bonding system um
and particularly if it's a wooden boat
because if you
do that on a wooden boat and you over
protect
the system with a with a zinc or
aluminum anode
you can destroy the wood surrounding
protection and i've seen that
done and most of those older wooden
boats have high end bronze
through hulls anyway and they probably
have a bronze propeller shaft
and then they got a bronze propeller
there's no reason
to tie all of that a lot together to any
kind of a bonding system
um but in the event of a lightning
strike
you've now got all of these isolated
metal fittings and if you get a side
flash to one of them you can blow it out
of the boat and sink
so you know so there are there's pluses
and miners
to all of this but uh we on our first
book the ingrid
we had all our bronze through house we
had everything unbonded
and we owned that boat for 15 years and
the only corrosion we had was a very
small amount of corrosion around the
knot meter impeller because it's
generating a small electric current
and we've got a little bit of straight
current corrosion and a little bit of
corrosion
on the propeller shaft so you can always
go ahead and put a
zinc or an aluminum anode on the shaft
and protect it out
but for most boats and particularly if
it's a european-built boat in the last
decade or so
they've been using high-end brass for a
lot of through-hull fittings instead of
bronze
they need to be bonded and tied to a
sacrificial anode
i've seen boats in which you could kick
the through hull after two years and
they took off
and that because they were untied to the
bonding system using what's called
dzr brass um desyncification resistant
brass
for through holes instead of bronze and
it may be desyncification resistant but
it's not that resistant
um my own my brother's boat and two
years old there were
visible cracks in some of the
through-hole fittings
from the tailpipes because it's this dcr
brass
and it's not bronze and that that was
really widely used in europe it may
still be for all i know
um for for a decade because it's cheaper
than bronze
and the iso standard at the time and
again it may have changed i don't know
what it is now only required through
health to survive for five years
what was stupid you know that's
ridiculous yeah
five years i mean it's like a car i know
they could be in compliance with this
dcr bros
and so if they weren't bonded and tied
to an anode
then you could in location get some
fairly racket rapid um
galvanic corrosion and it doesn't you
can't see it on the external of these
devices because you're eating the zinc
out of the brass and what you end up
with
is a porous uh structure that if you
whack it
it'll smell and that's when you find out
so i i always tell people whether
if they have any question about the
quality of their through through-hole
fittings
next time they're out of the water whack
them pretty hard with a rubber mallet or
something
not with with a with a metal object but
they're supposed to be able to withstand
a 500 pound force in any direction wow
without damage but whack it hard and see
if you can break it
because if you can you need to know
yeah it's people are reluctant to do
that in case it breaks well
you know if it's going to break you need
to know yeah and
out of the water is the place you want
to find that out on the heart yeah
100 100 another uh
thing i see all the time particularly
with these european build boats
is um they do have a bonding circuit and
it is tied to a sacrificial anode
but they'll put a basically a form of
a a cable clamp or a
jubilee clip i'm having a senior moment
here
again thank you for being human i'm
thinking in terms of english terminology
and not american
uh which is bizarre since i've been in
the states for 30 years
um like a house clamp
yeah you'll see a glorified hose clamp
with the bonding wire
put into it all the time all the time
it's not doesn't make a good enough
electrical connection for a
bonding system that that's a bonding
wire needs to be
under some kind of a screw or bolt that
that's uh tapped into
the metal fitting to make a good
connection uh and the other thing you
need to make sure
is that if you've got daisy chain
devices so you've got bonnie
coming into one and going to the next
one it has to come off the same terminal
because if you have it on two different
terminals and you've got any uh galvanic
current it's actually going to go
through
the fitting and it's going to corrode it
so you actually
make the problem worse not better so you
need to have
something better than a hose clamp and
you need to have those wires come in and
out at the same point
yeah we avoid the daisy chain uh we do
you know
we do have and spoke with you know like
on my own boat
you know if we get sometimes we've got
owners that invite us to
solve a bonding issue generally it's
from pain
and uh we're you know because otherwise
we've seen islands you know you
you could literally lose and this
happens over time because bonding
systems are
just they're installed and never
maintained yeah and they we don't know
what they do
for most of us and so you go on a boat
even a 45-foot powerboat 50
you'll find tons of islands on that boat
you know there might be you know islands
everywhere you know it's like
these three through halls are together
these four over there
that's connected oh that one up front
got abandoned
and the boat is bonded but it's not even
bonded it's not even common anymore like
these islands are completely
standalone and on top of it they're not
even connected to zincs anymore
or any sort of anodes they're just
completely bonded without animals
yeah they're just making problems worse
and as you know if the boat is out of
the water
you should be able to take a multimeter
in his owns mode and put it on any two
bonded fittings and get less than an ohm
in resistance
that's a good one yeah that's good yeah
and if it's uh if it's anywhere close to
an ohm it should be well below an home
yeah there's an issue with the the
bonding system you've got
corrosion in the terminals or poor
connections or whatever
and it needs to be sorted out because
you're actually making problems worse
not better
how do you how have you solved this
issue i get this question sometimes and
i
again it's not that common so we don't
see it i like to but i'm thinking maybe
you've seen this
what about these boats that don't have
uh
sort of um you know obviously an
engine that goes through a shaft seal
that goes outside they're simply it's a
halt
you know at the end of the day it's a
hall and they're asking well how do i go
about
grounding even my dc negative
on that boat you know how do i not have
just a voltage differential between a
positive and negative post how do i go
about connecting my boat forget ac like
there's no shore power how do you go
about what have you done
or seen in the past with those sort of
applications
i i'm not well to get the care what
we're talking about here jeff
um but uh there should be a single point
on the boat
which is connected unless you've got an
isolated ground dc system
which is a little different that'll be a
metal boat but on most of our boats we
don't
um there should be a single point on the
boat but which the
dc negative is connected and any bonding
system is connected and any lightning
protection system is connected
and the ac grounding wire if we've got
one is connected so there's one point at
which all of these things come together
yeah the common ground and on a small
boat it might be uh
on the engine block actually where the
negative cable goes back to the
battery negative yeah that used to be
the way they did it years ago on a lot
of small boats
but typically now it's a separate bus
bar somewhere on the boat
where all these things come together
yeah that's how we do it sometimes the
only challenge you're right i mean
i'm still i'm even seeing the avyc sort
of schematic
in my head that's where all the
but you're right most builders basically
short circuit not short circuit but they
bypass the need for that common ground
point and use the dc
negative because it's the prevalent sort
of ground on the boat
they use that as the common ground
and then they'll start tying different
things to it like you're saying the
bonding they might tie in the rf
they might tie in the ac ground to that
and then obviously that is grounded
outside through you know
the engine block through the propeller
but you can't have that chaff coupler
you know that flexible shaft copper i've
seen that happen
yeah electrically uh um
that's okay as long as you don't have
you know more than four connections
but uh anytime you uh you're going to
have more than four connections
you've got to have some kind of a bus
bar big fan
yeah more before and then the other
thing uh what i'm thinking about with
bus bars now because we're using them
more and more
uh particularly where we've got a lot of
these high current circuits
um what i typically see is the the main
on the positive side now i'm talking so
we got a lot of current flow
uh not in there in the grounding system
but um
we typically see the battery feed coming
in at one end of the bus bar and then
we'll see all the loads coming off of it
a much better way to do this is to bring
the the battery feed into the middle of
the bus bar
and then loads spreading out so you're
dividing the current flow
through the bus bar in two directions
and that'll uh
reduce the voltage drop and the heat
issues and other issues
and then we want the the high current
devices
as close as we can on either side of
that connection point and then we'll go
out to the
lower and lower current devices and that
way we minimize the current flow through
the bus bar
um and it improves the system
i i you know i honestly it's the first
time i've heard that
we've i tried to alleviate that with
having because of the four posts we'll
do
maybe the battery connection and the
inverter and something huge again
on that single stud so it's not even
current carrying on the
terminal bar on the distribution bar and
then
but i like your idea of putting in the
middle i think that's a really
especially some of them are
uh from different companies or five
posts that would be really easy i think
bep does a five post uh
heavy duty distribution bar and that
would be a perfect
solution for that and if you're on a
post
you want the um the higher current
devices up against each other
to supply in there now and then the
smaller ones progressively so that
um we're minimizing the resistance but
you know if you've got
200 amps running through a circuit and
you've got even you know a tenth of an
ohm resistance you're going to get a lot
of heat
so those connections have to be
electrically perfect i have on on our
boat on one of our experiments
we had 150 amp circuit it would run
continuous
uh i got um one of those uh blue seas
fuses where they have
the fuse has got posts that hold it and
then there's a big bus bar on each end
and then the separate
connections for the tunnel yeah they're
really rugged heavy duty
so and i've got the cable coming into
there and you talk these
things down with a socket set you know
this is these are really tight
connections
uh and i'm still generating a ton of
heat to this connection
so i took it apart to take a look i had
a heat shrink on it i had the tiniest
little piece of heat trinket migrated
into the contact area
and even though 99 of the contact area
was still clear
that was cocking it enough with that 150
amp circuit
running continuous for it to get really
hot so
now so that brings me another
idea is that one of the most useful
tools we can have on our boats now is a
heat car
oh yeah the infrared camera you know
camera that plugs into your smartphone
for less than two hundred dollars
are you tired of the clear one whoa any
brand no there's a number of them
yeah those are amazing you can get a
heat gun for twenty dollars
so anytime we've got a high current
circuit on our boats
we should load it up you know discharge
the batteries crank the engine up
run the older navy flat out give it 10
minutes and then we could shoot every
connection on that circuit with a heat
gun and see if we've got any hot spots
yeah and that's where that camera is
even better because on a dc
panel or an ac panel because ac panels
they draw they're continue i mean some
owners are riding those line rate right
like i mean
they've got 50 amp coming in they're
going as close to humanly possible to 50
yeah and then they're they're going to
settle at 49 you know or something or
even 50
51 they'll try to load it as much as
possible and that's where those
connections on the ac
panel if there's a any sort of
lack of perfection there oh you know
those breakers end up melting they melt
the breakers beside them yep
it's uh the camera is just a brilliant
troubleshooting tool
i love it yep love it
absolutely i mean about these um
ac circuits uh i see more and more
burnt uh elements and short power inlets
you know outlets on the dock short
baronets on the boat um
the fittings on the shore power cord
because we are running these things
uh close to their rated maximum
and the slightest uh corrosion or
whatever at either end of that circuit
it's going to get really really hot and
it's going to melt down so
something we need to inspect on a really
regular basis
is the shore power cord and the
connections of both ends and if there's
any signs of burning
we need to replace it couldn't agree
more i tell people
like the first sign of corrosion on that
plug if it looks
tarnished in any shape if it looks like
oh
why is it not perfect i'm like time to
chop that thing off reinstall another
end or if you can't
buy another 50 you know 50 another cord
because the money that's where most of
the fires here in the pacific northwest
because of people running heaters to
maintain the boat temperature
because we know most of us don't take
our boats out of the water so you know
the water temp is around 10 degrees
celsius in the winter time
so we're keeping uh heaters on board and
if you're on board
while you might want to bring the
temperature to 20 and now you're you're
hammering the same seashore power cord
yeah big i mean that they even the
insurance companies were actually giving
discounts
on the premiums for people that would
install the smart plugs
where they're mounted in a slightly
angled side of a
cockpit yeah there is a point at which
water could get in and
pass the seals oh yeah well retrofit 2x2
yeah that was the fault you know
probably a year or two two three years
back so they probably corrected it but
there was an issue there with a certain
angle on with some of those
installations
yeah it's a terrific piece of kit yeah
the only one thing is that before they
wouldn't alarm on the alarm
and so people would literally lose their
shore power for appear
they lose their shore power they'd be
like what the hell it's at the dock
it comes back and it disappears because
the temperature sensor would actually
disconnect the circuit and reconnect it
over time as it would cool off
yeah and people were losing their mind
they're like how is my shore power cord
intermittently turning itself on and off
and at the beginning when we were new
with the smart plugs we're like you have
a smart plug yes
like oh my god your temperature sensor
is telling you
it's actually literally disconnecting
your circuit because you're overheating
so it's actually doing what you want
there you go and sure enough you would
look at the shore power plug and
uh there was an issue and that was where
the issue it was intermittently taking
it offline
we melted down the shore end of our
court in europe
during the highmar experiments because
we had a
massive battery bank for electric
propulsion and i had de-rated our
our battery charger to 80 of the this is
europe so it's a 16
amp 240 volt circuit so i de-rated the
the battery charger down to 12 amps
because i knew it would be running for
hours at a time um and stressing out the
short cord and i still melted down
the shore end uh the outlet and the plug
wow
that's a quarter so you were at 75
percent d rate
you were 25 degraded 75 percent of
continuous
and still melted down the yeah there
must have been just a tiny little bit of
resistance in
in the connection just enough to
generate heat and you know over three or
four five six seven hours
it got hot enough to melt down and
literally melt down the
outlet than the plug yeah that's why i'm
a big fan of those
if you've got a bigger boat and you've
got those glending at least one side
the both sides is not a connection point
you know like uh
you know every time you disconnect
something and you reconnect it and
people forget to do that
you know maybe again if you don't have a
smart plug that 15 maybe
20 degree slight turn most people just
plug it in
and they assume it's good and i've seen
that countless times where
i come up to the boat when i do a survey
the first thing i do is i touch the
electrical lava and i see if i can twist
if i can twist it then i know i'm like
okay this is
this is the first bat sign yeah you know
if they didn't know that they needed to
twist
what else are they not aware of right
yep yeah
yeah i have a photograph of a boat that
caught fire because of that
with the boat moving and uh it uh caused
an arcing fault
set the boat on fire and the boat set
the marina on fire
and uh the insurance company denied the
claim
because uh owner negligence because they
hadn't
twisted the ring yep
can you i mean that's that that's that's
waking up in the
in the third world country in a prison
one morning yeah
that's that that can't be good you're
like what brought me here right now
what did i possibly do to deserve to be
right here right now
that would be opening our insurance
policies
yeah yeah that's really expected to do
to do at least what what is required to
make these connections
yeah it's it's i mean that's the one
thing about voting you know it's not
easy you want easy i tell people
buy an all-inclusive you know go for a
week somewhere that's easy
voting is not easy it's a personal
everest for every one of us
you know it's uh that's why very few
people actually see it through
it's just a lot of people start but a
lot of people just never end up leaving
the dog
you know they leave the dock a little
bit and they go you know what it's too
much hassle having fun
yeah exactly i want to give you some
an opportunity if any closing uh
anything you want to say that you didn't
get a chance to
talk about today nigel i can't thank you
enough for being here with me today
this is honestly a highlight not my day
my week my month it's a highlight in a
long time coming on my side
yeah at some point you've got to cast
the lines off
even if you don't you got to do it
because at the end of the day that's how
we all learn
and there's only so much we can learn
with seminars and
and uh you'll see people sitting at the
top for years working on the boat
and they actually never end up using it
but at some point we just have to get up
and go
terry and i did it quite young we
decided we weren't going to wait till we
had the money to do it
i actually i've kept the family in
poverty for 25 years as we
went through a succession of evernote's
boats so
so we went and did it and had the
children on board as opposed to waiting
until we could afford it
but you get at some point you just gotta
go yeah
and then i tell people a boat is a toy
at the end of the day you know if we
screw it up
and as long as nobody gets hurt it's not
a catastrophe
um we maybe we wreck the toy but we're
still alive and healthy
and we can still get on with our lives
because people get really stressed out
when they make mistakes uh yeah we're
all gonna make mistakes
we've all done stupid things um we just
have to take them in stride
and uh not get too uh bend out and shape
over them just learn from them and keep
going
yeah wise words wise words from an
experienced cruiser
again nigel thank you so much for
joining us here today i can't tell you
how awesome this is
absolute privilege for you sharing all
those years of insight
and experience you have thanks so much
for uh
joining us thanks for all the viewers by
the way
uh nigel and i spoke about a lot of
things including uh the vote how to link
is going to be down below
so any of you that want to click on that
and see it for yourself please i
encourage you to do so
you can learn on your own or you can
leverage the experience of others
and this is basically you know there's a
shorter path there so
definitely encourage all of you to uh
not make all the mistakes
on your own also we're gonna be
different links of all the different
topics we talked about lithium
we talked about alternators high up and
alternators external regulators all
those products and links
for anyone that's curious and wants to
geek out are also going to be down below
please provide feedback questions i
can't wait to see what people have to
say about this video and this
conversation
and thanks everyone for watching i
really appreciate you joining us here
today
thank you
you
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