Two new wooden items were bought in this years boat show at Southampton and he's fitted them. First is a kitchen towel holder. This is located below a similar wooden holder that has had the teas & coffee jars in. I think this was brought about by a small fire that occurred when the kitchen towel roll kept with the mugs behind the hob, rolled out when the hob was on. Usually the thickness of the towel roll is such, that it is jammed between the mugs and the top of the unit preventing the mugs from rattling about too. On this occasion the roll was nearly all used and was able to roll freely.
Oddly despite slamming in overfalls, the tea
& coffee jars have never moved
The second item can be described as a magazine rack, but this is being used to house the cooking oils & vinegar's and is deep enough for the mainly plastic bottles not to come out during a sea passage. This is down the side of the sink unit and doesn't infringe on the saloon space as the steadying pole is located there. This does however free up yet another cupboard which has enough space to fit a shelf and make more use of the space.
Free's up storage space in a cupboard
Remember my skipper blowing up my radio, well yes he did fit a new digital model whilst we were away, but the aperture was just to small to fit housing unit at the time. Well this has been done and the front has been fitted and it looks so much better as it should.
So with the fog today (30/12), skip set to on the Webasto ducting and decided to replace the first length between the heater unit and the first Y junction in the rear port cabin.
Inner liner has come away
blocking the free flow of heated air !
So he's going to work his way through me from rear to the master cabin, replacing the existing duct with new, which hasn't got this liner and add an insulation sock to its outside. Once he's reached the saloon outlet, he's going to see just how much air flow and heat is reaching that point before making a decision as to whether the variable speed in line fan he bought ages ago is actually needed. If it is fitted beyond the saloon outlet he will then have the ability to, when none of the rear cabins are in use, to draw the air forward to the master cabin, where currently nothing but hope appears at the outlet !
Today skip turned up and ran the heater unit once more but brought a little toy with him. The temperature at the open end of the insulated duct in the rear cabin reached 102.6C and a velocity of 8.5m/s. He left it running and returned home returning later in the day to find the unit had shut down once more with the same pattern of two flashing. He shut it down and tried to fire it up again, no flashing but no noise from the stern locker either. So he shut it down again to see if there was an amperage demand when he turned it on again - nothing, zilge.
Today 2nd January, skip arrived and set off the Webasto once more. He then set about cleaning & polishing my hull on the starboard side once more. The heater unit ran faultless for ages, dipped after an hour or so, then picked up again for another couple of hours. It then stopped again. Skip decided to run the fan only option and eventually got that to work and so all the heat was taken out of the unit before trying to run it once more. This time he succeeded and it fired up. He eventually turned it off and allowed it to run through its shut down procedure, a sequence that doesn't often happen. The fuel gauge also fell by 5l but this may be the inaccuracy of the gauge itself and reflect on some of the diesel used to get to the Yacht Haven.
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Wednesday 4th January and skipper returned to see what had happened with the overnight experiment. The heat had turned on, probably as the thermostat reached its lower limit, but again two flashing of the indicator light. This time he changed tack and decided that with the thermostat turned right up and the saloon reaching 22C on the opposite side as to where the heat was dissipating, he'd pull himself back a bit. So instead of the dial being set at 3'o'clock and the unit running at full throttle till it stops, he'd set it to 9'o'clock and just run it and see what happens. The fuel gauge had dropped from 230 to 227l, so he'll keep an eye on that. There's no signs that diesel is leaking from anywhere and there's no great bluey white cloud coming from the exhaust at start up.
With the unit running happily at its lower level, skip proceeded to disconnect the 60mm duct from the starboard side cabin and slide the insulation sleeve over and secure it back again. May be tomorrow he'll add the insulation to the duct that feeds both outlets up to the T junction, leaving the port side to finish off in the stern. With the heater still running, he set about cleaning & polishing another panel along my port side and was interrupted by the owner of High Flyer, a sister yacht to me and one we tried to follow during one of the Round the Island Race a couple years back.
She has two alternators on board, plus a 2.6m keel, he also suffered from galvanic erosion but is moored in East Cowes marina, where not only are all the shore power points are earthed through the metal piles but the then new estate near by is too. Apparently a few boat suffer quite badly over there. So that may answer why my old prop started to pit and the fitting of the third manual anode has helped.
So skip left leaving the Webasto running on low, still 20C in the saloon and is hoping that the unit continues to run without fault. If this can be achieved then he'll re-connect the downstream side of the ducting and see if the increase in back pressure created caused the unit to overheat and stop. His thoughts now are that the thermostat is very sensitive and by trying to run the unit at its' upper limits only causes the problem, by giving it some slack or range to work between the unit can, go in to idle mode and then increase when the thermostat tells it to. I'll let you know tomorrow when he returns.
Just one other thing to show you how my skipper thinks outside of the box. He's not left my shore power battery charger on constantly and forgets it, but when he turns up and puts the VHF on as he does and listens to the radio (although today he was listening to the heaters diesel pump ticking away instead), he discharges my batteries and before they reach 50% capacity he then turns the charger back on and lets it go through its full charge, absorption & float sequence to clear any sulphide build up on the battery plates and prolong the life of the batteries themselves, before shutting it down again.
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Friday 6th January - My Webasto has managed to run all night last night, a Wha Hoo moment as my skipper stood on the hard looking up listening to the singing of the exhaust. So today he opted to connect the un-insulated downstream section of duct which goes beneath my saloon heads and finishes under the navigation table, where the another Y junction existed and turned the dial (thermostat) up slightly and continued to polish my hull before the rain drifted in.
With light fading and one more section complete, he sat on the floor with a cup of tea, a torch and the Kestrel 3000. He pondered as how he was going to feed the larger 90mm duct forward to the master cabin, as the existing is 60mm is attached to the hull with cable ties. He decided that he will have to 'drill' circular inspection holes (150mm dia) in the base of my storage under the seats, so he can not only get to these cable ties, but get two arms in to be able to feed the new duct through, the next obstacle being the master cabin en-suite.
With the torch he could not only see the cable ties but could also see that at sometime during manufacture someone had stepped on the duct flattening it ! This clearly is one more reason why nothing but hope & anticipation came out of the front. Is the puzzle being slowly unravelled ?With the Kestrel, he measured accurately the velocity from the new free end and it reached 2.0m/s and the temperature was a cosy 45.0C. There is of course another take off (Y) under the saloon heads feeding the heads themselves. Skipper likes the idea of this being nice and warm acting as a drying room, but mustn't get ahead of himself.
So for now at the new setting he's left it running, hopefully it has settled down. The fuel dropped from 235l by 15l, suggesting that there was an issue. Last night it had only dropped 2l.
I assume he'll be back tomorrow to see if it's still running and finish off the last section of polishing of my starboard side.
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Saturday the 7th - The heater unit had stopped but the indication lights weren't flashing, skip decided that as it was mild, hence the fog/mist that covered the Solent, may be the thermostat had done its job and my system was in standby, so he turned the dial up. The rapid flashing indicated that start mode was now in progress and soon heat would be pouring from the duct beneath the chart table.
He checked the in line filter and oddly it was almost dry. He opted to remove the filter and let the pump draw directly from the tank. A further 3 litres had been devoured by the beast.
Skip emerged from the saloon and spent the rest of the day polishing the push & pull pit stainless steel rails, the dampness preventing him from continuing with my hull. Having cleaned the pull pit stainless at the bow he moved to the stern to do the same to the push pit. Here he saw a cloud of blue smoke emerge from the exhaust of the heater unit and it cut out. Reading from the internet that these units are very temperamental about the quality of fuel they burn, skip is now considering running paraffin through my heater to increase the temperature within burning off any carbon deposits and then using my spare fuel cans with some high grade diesel in to see if the unit runs without issue. If the low grade marine diesel is the cause, then a second dedicated tank will be made and installed behind my existing tank to serve the heater only.
He's not best pleased and will have a chat to Webasto as to why their technology is falling behind changes to fuel quality. He does love a challenge.
Today Sunday (8th), Skip ran some paraffin through my Webasto heater unit and although he didn't measure the temperature it certainly felt hotter to me. He has since set it up to run on 10l of road diesel over night. So two thing will be learnt from this, firstly will the fuel make a difference and secondly is it over pumping causing it to flood and die, so how long will the 10l last ?
Today the UK Webasto guys responded to his terse e-mail and the content of the discussion was very interesting. C02 could be the answer to the problem. With a new burner fitted a while back, but skip knew nothing about C02 levels at the time or now, apart from those that you install an alarm for in a household situation. It would appear that if he takes my unit down to a local fitter/supplier, he can set it up on a rig, run it and like your car, the exhaust gas analyser will tell the technician all sorts about how the unit is performing and adjustments can be made to get it to the optimum burn, with the "standard" diesel
This means that the marina fuel which is ultra low sulphur road fuel, with dye, that this "standard" fuel and it now has up to 7% FAME ( bio-diesel). So by adjusting the units C02 it can run as intended and efficiently as possible.
So the way forward is to take the unit off and go get it set up on a bench and I'll let you know how skip gets on. In the meantime I'm assuming he'll continue to play with the tank of road diesel until he's booked in to go across the main land in a car.
Well Skip popped down on a very wet Monday and sure enough the heater unit was still going. It was as he calls it in standby mode in that both the fan, fuel pump and heater itself were running. A light breeze was coming from the duct with an ambient heat. This he recons indicates that the thermostat is functioning as it was around 18C in the saloon. He checked the fuel can and this had dropped probably by 2l over the 24hr period.
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Today the UK Webasto guys responded to his terse e-mail and the content of the discussion was very interesting. C02 could be the answer to the problem. With a new burner fitted a while back, but skip knew nothing about C02 levels at the time or now, apart from those that you install an alarm for in a household situation. It would appear that if he takes my unit down to a local fitter/supplier, he can set it up on a rig, run it and like your car, the exhaust gas analyser will tell the technician all sorts about how the unit is performing and adjustments can be made to get it to the optimum burn, with the "standard" diesel
This means that the marina fuel which is ultra low sulphur road fuel, with dye, that this "standard" fuel and it now has up to 7% FAME ( bio-diesel). So by adjusting the units C02 it can run as intended and efficiently as possible.
So the way forward is to take the unit off and go get it set up on a bench and I'll let you know how skip gets on. In the meantime I'm assuming he'll continue to play with the tank of road diesel until he's booked in to go across the main land in a car.
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On leaving he turned it up slightly higher but not quite enough to set the thermostat off just at that point, this will occur tonight as the temperature outside drops. So encouraging news !
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One step forward . . . So on return on Wednesday after his meeting in London, skip returned to find it had stopped, but was not disappointed as it had run out of fuel. He set it up back to my main tank and left it running once more however on Thursday he returned to find it running cold, this was as he had inadvertently switched it to fan only ! To he's been down twice today and my heater still doesn't like the fuel in my tanks, it just wont fire up again. He's going to try to run marine diesel from another supplier to see if it'll run consistently on that.
If it does his suspicion that because I can carry 240l of diesel in my tank and during a season only 50 or so litres of fuel is used, the remaining residue fuel is absorbing moisture (through its bio content - don't ask it all becomes a bit daunting). Thus my heater, with its current C02 setting struggles to burn. Tomorrow (Friday), he's going to another fuel supplier down the river and going to see if I can burn 10l of that. If I can then the finger points to old fuel and moisture probabilities or C02 setting is wrong. Three things he can then do, one is to fit a dedicated tank for the heater unit, so that the circulation of fuel in this tank will be far greater, get the unit down to the supplier he's been talking to to get the C02 levels correctly adjusted and lastly ensure that the full 240l of fuel I can carry is used during the year so that at winter times fresh diesel fills my tank.
It snowed today the first of the year down here. I'd hate to think what my old home, Inverkip, has been like.
