Tag Archives: sailboats

For Gear Heads.

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By Erik Dolson

When I bought the 25 year old boat, I was completely ignorant of electrical systems and the boat had three battery monitors: One in the charger /inverter (charges the main or “house batteries when connected to “shore” power, or takes direct current from the batteries and turns it into alternating current for appliances), one in the master switch panel, and a small round monitor labeled “Balmar” that only retired Balmar Inc. techs remembered and for which Balmar has no information anywhere. I asume it was sourced from another OEM.

None of the three ever agreed with either of the other two as to voltage or current. And, I wasn’t sure if the little round guage wasn’t actually connected to the battery that was used to start the engine, given that unlabeled wires run everywhere.

Let’s not get into the two huge alternators that hung off the main engine and were driven by two too small V-belts impossible to adjust, and a dumb regulator. Boy, did they eat belts. Even a Blalmar smart regulator didn’t cure that (a serpentine belt, did, with one larger alternator. Sometimes you have to KISS a problem away).

Oh, the generator regulator was installed such that the “dripless” shaft seal could toss salt water right at it. Talk about random issues! Burnt wires! The generator exhaust was plumbed into a cockpit drain, which allowed engine noise and diesel smoke unimpeded access to the cockpit during evenings at anchor. The tachometer didn”t need to be replaced despite the insistence of a tech who aparently didn’t grasp open circuit vs volatage under load, and the main engine would not start for a while in Alaska until, again, contacts were sanded and tightened.

So, if three guages don’t tell the same story, get a 4th! Bought a Balmar Smart Guage and wired it myself to one battery of the house bank so that I would absolutley know where and how. This battery monitor agreed with the voltage of the round Balmar guage which also gives amps draw. They were consistetly .2 volts higher than the old panel monitor, which also seems to report amps randomly between 2 and 200, which I put down to age/shunt issues, and a refrigeration system that does not go through the main panel at all but is wired up somewhere in the engine room. I’ll find the connections eventually.

But as long as things were working and somewhat consistent, I wasn’t worried. I was ignorant, almost as good!

That left the charger / inverter, which agreed in volts with the two Balmar guages when it was not charging, but was way off when it was. It also was not fully charging the batteries from shore power, I realized later, though my main engine and generator did, once new regulators were installed. The charger / inverter started to behave once a loose ground was tightened up during the process of sanding engine room electrical bus bar connections.

Then came solar, and the panels, and solar controllers, and a battery sensor that doesn’t broadcast beyond it’s own low profile shadow, and hence even more discovery.

It’s amazing to me how frustrating this can be, but at the same time, how much I love this stuff! I really mean that. What an education!

Like discovering after almost threeee yeeears and uncountable episodes of wiping up diesel while chasing the perfect flame that my Dickenson Diesel Heater doesn’t just want good draft, it really prefers positive cabin pressure! What a hoot!

Where to start…?

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Dawn in my Treehouse feels warm, secure, and surreal. A mile away, wind generators roar with the pulsing beat of helicopter blades from a neighbor’s marijuana field fending off frost. I hear the fridge humming and the coffee pot clicking with heat while sending a fat burbling steaming stream into the glass carafe.

My ears also ring from damage by 427 inch motors howling too close, or the squall of a 4-cylinder diesel engine inches from my head in the confined space beneath the cockpit of the boat. Or maybe from chainsaws while cutting up firewood decades ago. Or rock concerts from decades before that.

Or maybe my ears just echo with waves of compressed time. It’s that kind of morning.

It’s good to be back in the Treehouse. No, it’s not really a treehouse, but the living room on the high second floor is mostly windows that look out into green branches of juniper and pine on a hilltop surrounded by mountains. It feels to me like a treehouse so that’s what I call it. The outside is built of rusting steel, the inside done in golds and yellows and copper. I was cold when I built it a decade ago so I built it warm in fact and in feel.

It’s been almost a year since Irish and I took the boat north to Victoria, spent most of the winter there, then on to Alaska and back. An intense, at times frightening, awe-inspiring, cold, frustrating, rewarding, year. The boat now sits on her buoy, rotating on twice-a-day tides, drawing one and one-half amps an hour from an 800 hour battery bank.

I need to get some solar panels so that I don’t kill the batteries. But to do that I need a place to put the panels, and so I need to build the hard-top, which I’ve designed and redesigned and then redesigned, but to install the hard top I need to move the boom up eight inches, which means I need to get the sail cut …

The coffee pot just beeped three times to tell me it’s done keeping the coffee hot and if I want another cup, I’d better get a move on. That’s a good reminder about being in the moment, this moment, here in the Treehouse.

Alaska was tough on Irish, but she was tougher. She not only had to deal with the fear of being on the boat that tried to kill her last December and took her right eye, but then had to leave the Alaska trip for follow-up medical visits back in Oregon. While she was gone there were two different female crew members on board she had never met and no way to communicate assurances and all that. It was tough. Then the push back to Friday Harbor, almost a thousand miles, to see my daughters off to Japan.

Social Security denied her application for benefits. Parkinson’s, Fibromyalgia, nor the loss of an eye and inability to read did not convince the agency that Irish was disabled. They assert she should continue as a project manager running multi-person teams developing assessment data for America’s students. They understand neither her condition nor her work, or don’t care.

There were times I didn’t think Irish would make it on the boat. When she didn’t seem to remember that she was not supposed to get off the boat while it was moving. When she set the fender too high and we hit the dock — a depth perception problem from having only one eye. When she couldn’t see the log we hit that took out our water speed gauge, the result of seeing through a cloud of what she called her “starlings,” the mass of floaters in her good eye.

She’d been complaining of seeing spots. We had the eye examined in May before leaving, didn’t get many answers but some assurances they would fade with time. The eye was examined again in July when Irish was in Portland for an eye “realignment.” Again, nothing serious.

But Irish was concerned enough when we got back that she moved an appointment set for the end of October up to the middle of September. Good thing. “Cobblestones” at the edge of the retina. Cloudiness around the optic nerve. “So much different than July!” said her doctor, who then referred us to another doctor, who then referred us to a third, all in the same day. Glad we were at Casey Eye Institute where there were many experts.

The chance was only .05 percent that her body would try to reject her good eye after the damage from the fall, but that’s the most likely explanation of what’s going on. They’re going to rule out TB and other diseases that could be the cause of inflammation, but it seems that rejection is most probable. Now she has eye-drops, next week huge doses of systemic steroids, then immune-suppressant drugs probably for a lifetime.

No tears, no panic. We’re both probably in a state of shock. But this could change a few things. We’ll be doing a few calendared events a little sooner. A birthday-present trip to New Orleans may be celebrated a little earlier than planned.

But right now, she can still see and is on a couch not far from this chair. Outside some birds are loudly cheering the 30 pounds of feed I hung in the juniper below the huge windows that let warm sun pour into this room. I’ll ask Irish if I can get her another cup on my way to the coffee pot.