Shore Power and OpenCPN

Yesterday I downloaded OpneCPN, a free “open source” navigation package written by sailors for sailors.  It is a superb piece of software which once again demonstrates the power of Open Source where a small volunteer army of tech savvy enthusiasts continually make enhancements and improvements.  This package will deal with just about every kind of navigation chart around (both raster and vector types).  Last night I pointed it to the Argentina charts that Antonio passed over to me and it handled them much better than the viewer.

This morning over coffee I continued fooling around with OpenCPN.  I dug out my spare BU-353 GPS antenna, plugged it into the Acer and soon had the boat's position displayed on the chart.  Then I explored the making and management of routes and soon had routes defined from here at Mar Del Plata to Puerto La Plata and from there to Buenos Aires.  It was amazingly easy to define the legs of the route, move waypoints around, remove intermediate waypoints, enlarge the route, etc, usually with drag and drop operations.  Unlike the viewer where I had to bring on each chart as I needed it, OpenCPN allows me to move around between the charts almost seamlessly.

The point is that this will remove most of the guesswork from my navigation to BA.  I'll have a session with Alfredo in front of the computer and we'll discuss the nuances of the passage and make necessary adjustments to the route.  During the passage I'll have the Raymarine chart plotter on to deal with AIS, the Toshiba laptop on the nav table running Dave's GPS DataLogger software for the satellite perspective, and the Acer running OpenCPN for the nautical chart perspective. (OpenCPN can handle AIS but I'm happy to leave AIS on the Raymarine C120.)

Then I turned my attention to setting up the cabling for shore power.  The long (about 45 ft) heavy (AWG 12) cable was all set up with a plug for the socket on the jetty.  Fortunately the Australian plug for connecting to the boat could be fully disassembled so I took it apart and cleaned the metal sockets with sand paper.  However, the AWG 12 wires were too heavy to fit into the Aussie plug so I was forced to put the plug back onto the lighter cable that I had used in Australia.  So the problem was to join the heavy cable to the lighter one.  I purchased 16 amp male and female plugs to do the job but I realized this morning that the female plug was designed to be mounted on a surface and could not be used in free space.  I was about to walk back into town lugging the two cables to show the people what I needed when I happened to see Alfredo who suggested that I simply intertwine the various wires, cover them with silicone, then cover the lot with either heat shrink or tape.  I did the join but wasn't too happy with simply twisting the wires together.  In my my electrical box I found wire nuts of various sizes that Arnold had introduced to the boat.  I used wire nuts and put heat shrink over the wire nuts.  That left the two cables side by side rather than end to end.  I taped 6” of the cables together tightly, slipped tiny plastic bag over the end, then taped the lot again. For good measure I bound the two ends with a hefty plastic tie so that the joint cannot be stressed if the cable is pulled tight.  In the end I had a cable over 100' long with a join that was probably more robust than proper connectors.

Incidentally, I had been careful cross over the Active and Neutral wires because according to information on the internet Argentina and parts of Uruguay for some reason have reversed the pins.

I then spent 30 minutes carefully sandpapering pins on the connector in Pachuca's cockpit next to the companionway that had been totally exposed to salt water spray for the more than 3 years since I had used it last in New Zealand.

Then it was Show Time.

I made sure that the 220V breaker inside of the boat as Off then made the connection from the shore plug to the boat plug.  There was no electrical explosion so I then threw the 220V breaker.  Still no problem.  Then I switched on the Mastervolt 12/60 battery charger, its lights went through its startup sequence, then I looked over to the amp meter and saw that 18 amps were being delivered to the house bank (which was not too hungry because it was at 12.9V).  After being idle in the harsh marine environment for almost 3.5 years the Mastervolt and the wiring associated with it were still fine.

The Mastervolt 12/60 is a hard wired automatic 3 stage charger that handles an input of 900 watts at 230V +/- 10% and puts out up to a whopping 60 amps.  In a slip in the 220V world I've got no electrical supply problems.  The unit was built in Amseterdam.




After a while the House bank settled down to a steady state 14.2V.  I checked the Starter bank and it was still at 12.7V.  I then joined the two banks using the big switch and the Mastervolt increased its output and soon the two banks were equalized.  This confirmed two things that I had already figured out: (1) The Mastervolt delivers power solely to the House bank (2) The Voltage Sensitive Relay (VSR) works in only one direction, i.e. it does not allow charging to the Starter bank when it detects that the House bank has sufficient charge.  The other chargine source, the engine alternator, charges the Starter bank and the VSR will allow charging of the House bank when the House bank has reached the threshold voltage.  Once the Starter bank was up to full charge I isolated it again because I didn't want to mix charging between two different technologies of batteries of different ages.  The House bank is composed of 4x230 a/h gel batteries, and the Starter bank is made up of two older sealed "maintenance free" batteries, no doubt lead-acid. 

Scattered around the boat's cabin are three 220V double wall outlets and the next stage will be to connect Argentinean appliances such as a toaster and an electric jug (and maybe even a fan heater if it gets cold) to the Aussie wall plugs.  It's quite possible that Argentinean plugs will fit as they are;  otherwise I'll put an Argentinean plug on one of my Aussie power boards.

But first things first.  I cleaned out the refrigerator and started it up.  Then I found a small  grocery store that was more like a family operation with very friendly and helpful staff (“Don't take those plumbs, these just came in and they are fresher.”) where I got fruit, vegetables, cheese, butter, bread, etc, and a cask of white wine and two large bottles of beer for the refrigerator (… well … me, actually).  On the way back I dropped into a butcher shop that I had been noticing for a while and found it to be impeccably clean with the staff all wearing sparkling clean uniforms.  I was impressed.  I bought 2 T-bone steaks.  They were thin but added up .428 kg or just under a pound.  For the steak I was charged 13 pesos, which is less than $3.00.  Argentina appears to be a paradise for wine drinking carnivores.

During the shopping foray I went by Delta Computers.  The day before I had tried to purchase the WiFi antenna that I had seen the previous week but they were out of stock.  They told me that more would arrive today.  They were closed but that was understandable since they reopen at 3.30 PM and don't close until 8 PM.  I returned later in the day and true to his word the man produced the WiFi antenna that Stephen and I had researched.  I also picked up an Argentinean plug for the Toshiba laptop.

Yesterday Alfredo and I visited Alejandro to take the rigging issue to the next stage.  We spent quite a bit of time refining the specifications and now Alfredo must wait for a phone call from Alejandro for the quotation.  Once the quotation comes in I'll pay then wait for delivery and hope that we got the measurements right - or rather that Alfredo got it right because I had the easy job of holding the end of the tape over the hole at the mast end.  I ordered two D1's figuring that it would be good to balance the stays and have the extra spare later. Also, I had a choice between 7, 12, and 19 wire cable.  Alfredo preferred the 7 strand cable but to me it looked too rough and crude so I went for the 12 wire cable.  It will still be double galvanized.