Electrical Connections

I have decided to rewire the entire boat and bring it up to date with the latest electrical safety standards. So with that in mind, I started with the main fuse block that covers all of the major electrical loads on the boat.

I will not take credit for this design though. I got this from Compass Marine - so kudos to MaineSail and his excellent how to articles.

I started with a piece of 12" x 1" x 3/16" Copper Bar Stock I purchased from Industrial Metal Supply here in San Diego. I could have purchased it in a 3ft length, but at the time, I didn't think I would need all three feet. In hindsight, I should have gone ahead and bought it and saved the rest for future projects. Aw well. 20/20 and all that...

Next, I measured the distance between individual fuse blocks and marked it (measure twice, cut once). A friend of mine who has a drill press cut the holes and I hacksawed the bar to its correct length.

That was the hard part. Now all I had to do was piece the components together. The Copper Bar acts as a bus bar so I don't have to use 2/0 awg cable which is a bear to bend in short lengths. This makes it so much more compact.

The Fuse Blocks themselves are Blue Sea Systems ANL Fuse Blocks. The Three fuses are House Bank (250A), Alternator (100A), and Battery Charger (50A)

And there you have it. A new fuse block.

The Fuse Block with the Plastic Covers. I used a label maker to mark where I want to run cables from and to for ease of tracing them.

A New House Bank

I found a local supplier of AGM batteries that sells them super cheap as they are "blemished", meaning that they have some sort of cosmetic damage to them. As I don't care about that, I purchased two of these batteries for $125 apiece. They are Alcatel Lucent AGM Batteries that are rated at 175amp-hours at 20hrs. So with two of these installed in parallel, I'll have a 350ah battery bank. Not bad. These batteries are so inexpensive for what they are I am seriously tempted to go back and buy one more. BUT... I need to install these two first replacing my old batteries and see how much room I will have left. They're 105lbs apiece and heavy as hell to lug around, so once I have a place set up for them, the next time I take them out of the boat will be to replace them.

Here's a link to the Deep Cycle Battery San Diego

Back to the Boat

...and back to reality,

I finally got back to Liberty Call last night after a very long day of travel. Thankfully, I didn't lose any luggage. Of course when I got back, I open the hatch and I am shocked to find the huge mess I left before my trip. I could swear I didn't leave the boat this disorganized. Everything's here though, so I know this mess is my fault... I guess I was in so much of a hurry to leave that I left more out than I thought I did. Aw well... The mess has been organized, luggage stowed and clothes neatly put back in their drawers and lockers.

In that time, reality set in and I started to think back on all of the projects I dreamed about doing while I was away. The big one of course being Electrical Propulsion (EP). I've done a lot of research these past couple of weeks and I have come to the conclusion that battery technology is not quite where I would like it to be. The $/kWh of lithium batteries is not yet truly affordable and AGMs are just too flippin' big for the amount of energy that they provide. I still think EP is the way to go, don't get me wrong, but I think I will just wait and see how batteries develop in the next year or two. In the meantime, it gives me time to set aside funds for the new propulsion system, and slowly save up for it.

On that note, I've also learned that there is a guy here in my marina that is a whiz with Atomic 4's, so with his help, I should be able to get a couple more good years outta my A4.