ylop
Well-known member
underway - but not at anchor?
"Practical " Boat Owner?..
- Thread starter seeSimon
- Start date
Stemar
Well-known member
Before reliable diesels for small boats, people went sailing. Go back a century, and engineless boats were how stuff got moved around the world. We're spoiled - we expect to go to point X and get there in time for the table we've booked in the restaurant. Electric power can be made to work - Uma did, I don't know what they're doing now, I lost interest when they went off in the camper, but they went to remote places and anchored, almost entirely dependent on wind and sun. It may not always have been convenient, and I know they had a generator for emergencies, but it shows it can be done, but not if you think you're going to have the same flexibility as with that big old donk.
Who knows? Maybe banning diesels would get us back into sailing, heading towards somewhere, and getting there when we get there. I'm as guilty as the next person, probably more so, because Catalacs aren't exactly renowned for close tacking to windward. The sailing of the 1920s, instead of the 2020s, but your chart plotter will still mean you arrive off Cherbourg, rather than hoping to hit the Cotentin peninsula
Who knows? Maybe banning diesels would get us back into sailing, heading towards somewhere, and getting there when we get there. I'm as guilty as the next person, probably more so, because Catalacs aren't exactly renowned for close tacking to windward. The sailing of the 1920s, instead of the 2020s, but your chart plotter will still mean you arrive off Cherbourg, rather than hoping to hit the Cotentin peninsula
geem
Well-known member
Most people WITH Diesels never go anywhere!
flaming
Well-known member
I've barely been anywhere all year. Keep just heading out of the same river, sailing round in circles for a few hours and going back to the same river.
My god it's been a great season!
NormanS
Well-known member
You speak for yourself. You're the one who's complaining that their anchor chain wears away because it's always on hard sand and coral.
MagicalArmchair
Well-known member
I write a little for PBO and not really for the little dosh I get (the day job is sadly not boaty), more to make me write up the tinkering projects I have undertaken. I bumped into a lovely chap on the boat on the weekend who was suffering with stiff roller furling gear, I sent him my text around my experience with my Selden roller furling gear which started at hate when I purchased my boat, and has ended at delight and wonder. Without the magazine I would never have written it up. Without the magazine it would never have been published too give others this practical advice.
I have another thread around rebuilding my raw water pump of my D2 55 - if it wasn't for the magazine I would probably never write this up - I started the process tentatively this weekend (I got two sentences in before one of my children leapt on me!).
Boating, even practical boating, is a broad church, and the editor and staff at PBO need to try and walk a tightrope of dealing with all their readership. If we grumble about the bits we don't like and stop buying and supporting them, these magazines will die and we won't get the bits we do like.
I have another thread around rebuilding my raw water pump of my D2 55 - if it wasn't for the magazine I would probably never write this up - I started the process tentatively this weekend (I got two sentences in before one of my children leapt on me!).
Boating, even practical boating, is a broad church, and the editor and staff at PBO need to try and walk a tightrope of dealing with all their readership. If we grumble about the bits we don't like and stop buying and supporting them, these magazines will die and we won't get the bits we do like.
geem
Well-known member
Where do you keep your boat in between sails?You speak for yourself. You're the one who's complaining that their anchor chain wears away because it's always on hard sand and coral.
Done an Atlantic crossing this year. What did you do
NormanS
Well-known member
I anchor every night, and sometimes several times a day. I would be bored rigid crossing crossing an ocean. We sail between meals.Where do you keep your boat in between sails?
Done an Atlantic crossing this year. What did you do
Each to their own.I was merely, and not too seriously, responding to your questionable statement that "Most people with diesels never go anywhere".
trapper guy
Active member
i think a crucial point you are missing, is torque.
current has plenty of it, and with torque you can gear up to get the revs your system needs to produce useful power.
you dont need fast speeds at the paddle, just at the alternator/generator.
water has a mass of almost 1kg per litre, depending on the surface area of your paddle, thats a shit ton of powerful force going to waste if you are not making the most of it.
air on the other hand ha practically ero weight per litre, but people eem to consider a wind turbine a useful item to expend resources on?
make no sense to me
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trapper guy
Active member
no i never noticed it at anchor, because the prop needs to be turning for the blades to extend.
unless you are speaking of the training vessel, in which case when it was stopped, i was usually off it going finding something more interesting to do.
sailing can be quite dull and boring.
thinwater
Well-known member
I wonder if this is considered thread drift ... ?
geem
Well-known member
Your unlikely to be like most people. You are going places.I anchor every night, and sometimes several times a day. I would be bored rigid crossing crossing an ocean. We sail between meals.
I was merely, and not too seriously, responding to your questionable statement that "Most people with diesels never go anywhere".
Crossing oceans is never boring. Sometimes I wish it was
when you do it with just a couple on board, there is always plenty to do.trapper guy
Active member
crossing oiceans scare the sh*t out of me, coastal britain can be quite scary enoughYour unlikely to be like most people. You are going places.
Crossing oceans is never boring. Sometimes I wish it was
ylop
Well-known member
No im not missing torque or failing understand how gearing works. Im mostly telling you it is possible to get electrical power as the boat is sailing along - that’s not just theory there are commercial system that do it.
In fact by definition exactly that! And salt water a little more…
Yes that’s why there are tidal power projects off the Scottish coast. But what you are missing is that they are fixed installations which then rotate into the tidal stream.
If I attach a paddle wheel to my boat (in fact it has a tiny one for recording its speed) it turns when the force of the water is greater than whatever resistance it encounters. The resistance can come from many things, friction is always there, but if we want to generate electrical power there is work done which will also mean turning the dynamo/alternator is harder than if there is no power generated.
At practical sizes for deployment on a yacht you need the boat/water to be doing about four knots difference (either the boat moving through the water or the water moving past the boat) to generate any useful amount of power. Even if you anchor in a 4 knot tide the paddle wheel exerts a force of the boat which unless it is constrained so it can’t pivot around its anchor will “try” to alleviate the force by turning out of the flow.
There’s a variety of engineering reasons, both proper fluid dynamics but also practical realities - sea water is incredibly corrosive; fouling much worse at sea and those massive forces have the ability to rip your paddle wheel to pieces especially in a storm. Servicing and getting power to/from marine installations is much harder than on land and whilst we now do a lot of wind stuff offshore we cut our teeth where all you needed of do was climb a ladder…. But despite all this there are systems in real world use both for grid electrical production and power gen on yachts.
You keep talking as though you believe nobody is actually doing this but look here:
Hydrogenerators - Watt and Sea
Eclectic Energy Sail-Gen Towed Water Generator
Pardon our interruption...
And on a bigger scale:
'Most powerful' tidal turbine starts generating electricity off Orkney - BBC News
Pretty sure all of them have been mentioned in PBO over the years too!
Daydream believer
Well-known member
Yes! But what a change. Would I have been able to motor 90 miles (through 2-2.5 metre waves for 60 of those) at 6kts. with a silly little electric motor. Now I have a broken femour I can use my boat as a motor boat & motor long distances of up to 150 miles within my 24 hour SH insurance limit if I felt so inclined. I don't - but Dover to Dieppe is certainly on the cards next year.
Daydream believer
Well-known member
oldbloke
Well-known member
Generally the wet bits are quite safe, it's the crunchy bits round the edge that are the problem
seeSimon
New member
Looks like we will need to agree to disagree?
As to allegations of being insufficiently open minded....
I have an eprop outboard, which does reasonable duty ON MY TENDER and can be recharged from my (small) yachts 40A alt, or solar systems. This change was necessary due to the poor quality fuels (and the directly associated safety issues) that have been inflicted on v small boat users. They seem he'll bent 9n following the same "Eco" path with some of the new types of diesel fuels.
I also have used a LiFePO4 house battery in place of my original LA AGM battery for several seasons now.
Shock horror..I fitted this myself...despite dire warnings that me and my boat would soon be incinerated by inextinguishable battery fires.
I have not yet been able to convince a "suitably qualified professional" to attend, so as to sign off my work....regardless of the doubtless considerable costs that this will involve.
Recently I met a localish guy seeking to operate a brand new E-Power foot passenger ferry, who was having similar certification/insurance difficulties with "the authorities".
Hereabouts, folk get fed up waiting for access to the very limited pontoon space available, just to bunker fresh water.
The same pontoon provides the sole sewage pump out (very rarely used), and is also about to be fitted with ONE E charging point. Doubtless this will be primarily occupied by the harbour masters swanky new electric "patrol boat".
Much here is effectively "Unsustainable ", but for not the usual reasons they trot out...
seeSimon
New member
Perhaps too much esoteric high tech/cost content for one issue? There certainly was for me.
What of the many pages of guff about SatComms then?
B27
Well-known member
I'm surprised the magazine still exists.