Wish I had tied down wind genny

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C08

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99mph winds forecast for Christchurch where my boat is in a yard. My Rutland 913 has run without stoppage since 2009 following advice that tying down for strong winds allowed the bearings to chatter and develop flat spots. However I am not sure that the fully charged slow turning mode will cope with astronomical wind speeds and the best I can hope for perhaps is that the rotor just blows up and does not cause fire etc or injure anyone with a flying blade. I will give it an honorable burial with full honors as it has done well!
I know this is a small thing when there will be serious injuries and deaths in the Eunice storm but ones boat of 20 years that has seen you through thick and thin and never let you down is a worry in this situation.
There will be boats going over like skittle in some yards I just hope all member boats get through this unscathed.
 
AntarcticPilot said:
Just for encouragement, Rutland 913s have been used to power unmanned observatories in Antarctica, in regions where winds of 100mph are common.

They do remove half the blades!
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Thanks for the encouragement :cautious:-I think mine might have a few blades less when I next get down there!
 
I met someone with a recently ruined 913. It was on the West coast of Scotland years ago and he had it mounted on the mizzen. It had destroyed his Radome and also taken lumps out of the deck. I also ran into 2 other people with broken 913s in two different yards,

I always tied mine when extreme winds forecast and also removed it every winter. It was still fine after 10 years use but has been in storage since 2019. I hope OPs 913 survives, probably a bit marginal.
 
C08 said:
99mph winds forecast for Christchurch where my boat is in a yard. My Rutland 913 has run without stoppage since 2009 following advice that tying down for strong winds allowed the bearings to chatter and develop flat spots. However I am not sure that the fully charged slow turning mode will cope with astronomical wind speeds and the best I can hope for perhaps is that the rotor just blows up and does not cause fire etc or injure anyone with a flying blade. I will give it an honorable burial with full honors as it has done well!
I know this is a small thing when there will be serious injuries and deaths in the Eunice storm but ones boat of 20 years that has seen you through thick and thin and never let you down is a worry in this situation.
There will be boats going over like skittle in some yards I just hope all member boats get through this unscathed.
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Ring the yard and see whether they can do anything? My boat is on her mooring at Christchurch. The wind should be blowing her off which is good. Any problems the yard will ring me and or sort out.
 
Windy old night here in IOW living on board but we slept through it and neighbouring boats with untied windies still have all blades asfar as can be seen this morning. I think worse is due later this afternoon mind.
 
Windy now though and several of marina flags now streaming shredded. wheel cover from benny on other side of our pontoon has just flown multiple metres and is floating off . BUT I just got a text to say DPD will deliver my Amazon parcel by14.00 beats Herpes by miles! according to news flashes we had a 122 mph gust at the Needles, as always from a cliff top anemometer.
 
I had our Centaur decide she wanted a change of view and dragged her mooring tackle the best part of a 100ft to a new location so she is now in a 4/5ths tidal mooring unfortunately it is between some old unused fore and aft mooring piles so she will need some new paint and the teak rubbing strakes either side are not their normal smooth varnished selves. It could be far worse.

I went out at 22.30 last night when she was afloat and rescued her and put her on the club pontoon after doing some basic checks that there were no nasty vibrations on the propshaft and the rudder was working.
 
Just as we were watching local news last night on board here on IOW and congratulating ourselves for missing the many power outages others suffered, off went the power until 4 am, maybe deliberately whilst a repair carried out back down the lines? Apparently a sailing dinghy in compound moved off trailer and got holed on something
 
C08 said:
99mph winds forecast for Christchurch where my boat is in a yard. My Rutland 913 has run without stoppage since 2009 following advice that tying down for strong winds allowed the bearings to chatter and develop flat spots. However I am not sure that the fully charged slow turning mode will cope with astronomical wind speeds and the best I can hope for perhaps is that the rotor just blows up and does not cause fire etc or injure anyone with a flying blade. I will give it an honorable burial with full honors as it has done well!
I know this is a small thing when there will be serious injuries and deaths in the Eunice storm but ones boat of 20 years that has seen you through thick and thin and never let you down is a worry in this situation.
There will be boats going over like skittle in some yards I just hope all member boats get through this unscathed.
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Not criticizing, just trying to understand.

Why not tie it down every time you leave the boat, and have one small solar panel to top up the batteries? Less moving parts, the genny will last longer, there is less to go wrong, and ... less noise in the marina. I think that last one is very important to some people, just like slapping halyards.

I understand why all-solar does not work for many boats and locations, but a small one for battery topping is easy.
 
thinwater said:
Not criticizing, just trying to understand.

Why not tie it down every time you leave the boat, and have one small solar panel to top up the batteries? Less moving parts, the genny will last longer, there is less to go wrong, and ... less noise in the marina. I think that last one is very important to some people, just like slapping halyards.

I understand why all-solar does not work for many boats and locations, but a small one for battery topping is easy.
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On our newer to us boat which i carefully parked in a marina for the storm we have a Rutland wind genny which i did tie up, I have to say it is very quiet when in operation. I can only assume the noisy ones are when the bearings are starting to wear.
 
thinwater said:
Not criticizing, just trying to understand.

Why not tie it down every time you leave the boat, and have one small solar panel to top up the batteries? Less moving parts, the genny will last longer, there is less to go wrong, and ... less noise in the marina. I think that last one is very important to some people, just like slapping halyards.

I understand why all-solar does not work for many boats and locations, but a small one for battery topping is easy.
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The received wisdom - I think advice from Marlec - is that tying the generator down results in the rotor "rocking" and causing uneven wear and flat spots on some of the balls in the bearings.
 
For what its worth, following advice from Rutland I fitted a DPDT switch wired so that in pos 1 the output of the WG was shorted out and in pos 2 it was feed to the regulator. In the shorted pos the blades slowly rotate and are stopped from over revving by the WG's self induced back emf. I've had this system in place for the last 10 years and it is an easy way to quite things down.
 
lumphammer said:
For what its worth, following advice from Rutland I fitted a DPDT switch wired so that in pos 1 the output of the WG was shorted out and in pos 2 it was feed to the regulator. In the shorted pos the blades slowly rotate and are stopped from over revving by the WG's self induced back emf. I've had this system in place for the last 10 years and it is an easy way to quite things down.
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I believe Marlec's own controllers embody this.
 
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