QuietDolphin

We installed and connected the new solar panels last week. The system was expanded from 80 to 230W. Now we have a 50W panel before the windshield and two 90W panels on the pushpit held in place by NOA fittings .  Below the port side panel an Ankarolina (anchor rope roller) is going to be fitted, while under the starboard side panel the LifeSaver inflatable buoy got it's place. The panels are wired in parallell with 6mm2 solar wires all the way till the busbars. They go through deck via Scanstrut waterproof vertical seals  and connected to the panels by MC4 connectors. The wires coming from the panels are fused and connected to the newly added BEP Insulated distribution studs . We also upgraded the charge controller from 10 to 20A. The new MPPT controller is from Solarmare and has a display too. It got it's place in the "engine room", above the diesel tank, next to all the other electronics.

We decided to give the wood in the cockpit some love. The companionway hatch, mahagony trim pieces and handles were taken home, carefully sanded and treated with 5 coats of fresh Epifanes varnish. We also renovated the cup holder and storage box that one of the previous owners built as we really liked it's function and place as a step in front of the companionway. The box was sanded, the some of the old holes/cracks filled with a wood filler and painted with a white topcoat. The cover part we replaced with a new mahagony plywood which was treated with Epifanes varnish and new piano hinges. The box has an aluminium profile in the back and fits perfectly under the companionway ledge which holds it in place. It has two storage compartments, drained on the bottom and four cup holders (two smaller and two larges ones). In the had we manufactured a new bulkhead cover piece from mahagony plywood as the previous one had an ugly cut in it due to the old Silva instrument cables. Now that tho

There is a 3-way shutoff valve in our propane system which supplies both the stove and the the propane heater. The heater is connected via a copper tube, so the only flexible hose goes towards the gimbals stove and it was due to replace it. I installed a new 10mm hose terminal to the 3-way valve as the old was 8mm and not the proper size for the hose which is 10mm towards this stove. The valve was labeled and every connection was leakage tested after the assembly. We have an internal battery powered gas alarm under the stove and now we got a second alarm installed in the head, where the Gastherm propane heater is located. This alarm runs from the boat’s batteries and is connected to the always-on busbars.

Previous: Removing the old bottom paint All of the old self-polishing bottom paint has been removed. We scraped it off with a ProScraper, then sanded it with a 120gr orbital sander to get rid of any residues. The hull has been epoxy treated before and the old barrier coat was still intact in most places. We decided to apply a new barrier coat on top of it anyways, as this is the perfect opportunity and we don't want to redo this job in the near future. We choose Lefant's Epoxy primer which is a quite thick epoxy barrier coat that can be painted down till +5 celsius degrees and makes a watertight seal after even 4 layers. As we already had a barrier coat we decided to go with 4 layers and iterate between white and black colors to make it easy to get a good coverage. We used 12 liters of primer in total (one 3 liter can was just enough for one layer). First layer of primer Third layer of primer and filler The keel was also sanded back to the previous epoxy primer and was treated

There is no anchor windlass in the bow and I was considering the options for quite a while now. A vertical windlass would probably be the easiest to fit on deck or on the anchor locker lid, but it requires power. That means lots of long and heavy gauge wires or another battery close to the bow. I wanted to avoid adding more electronics and try to keep things as simple as possible.  The Lofrans Royal Horizontal Windlass is the last manual windlass still in production and we were lucky to find a second hand unit for less then half the price. The horizontal windlass is more bulky but we're hoping it would be possible to install it inside the anchor locker on a glassed in platform. We're not there yet, first the unit had to be serviced. The windlass arrived in a decent condition. Except a few external rust spots in the aluminium housing all the internal parts are in an excellent condition. But due to no recent maintenance, it was getting stuck and moving hard. I decided to disasse

While on the old panel all the fuses were on the panel itself, the new panel has only the rocker switches that are fused so we had to do some extra rewiring work, which was very much needed anyway to clean up the mess. We installed a new slightly larger plywood over the small plywood that was glued to the the hull, to accommodate the two new fuse boxes and the new busbar. One fuse box for all the circuits that doesn't require a switch on the panel, like the interior lights, and an other one for those that lead to the panel but where the switch is switching more than one circuit at the same time, like the NMEA 2000 power and navigation. Those circuits got separate fuses too. We also installed a new negative busbar from BEP (Zbus) with 18 terminals as the new panel has only positive connections. We did some cleanup in the wiring and tried to label everything as well. We used a cheap cable collector from Jula to help leading the wires together with the option to quickly remove if it