So plans are made to change aren't they?

If you were paying attention earlier you would have noticed that we haven't exactly followed our planned route.  What can I say, we're flexible, really flexible. This is the actual route we have taken.  

Anyway, a conversation a couple of weeks ago led to a discussion about what are the things we want to do over the next 5 and 10 years and for me having an electric boat (or diesel electric hybrid) has always been up there if and when we can afford it. We decided to take the boat up to Lelystad and see the distributor for Greenline boats in Lelystad. Suffice to say, we like what we see.

Cutting a long story short, we've decided that we will sell Ardella and get a second hand Greenline 33 that has an electric engine that can do 4 knots on the canals (which is about the speed limit anyway) and a diesel engine that can do 12 knots which would be fantastic for the more open waterways.  In addition to being ideal for here in Europe it is also a boat that we could easily bring back to Australia (on a container ship) and use on the east coast of Australia.  Pretty much, any where on the east coast of Australia we could use the electric motor within the bays and rivers and then use the diesel engine to get between the bays and rivers.

All things electrical

Well, it's now been a couple of weeks since we replaced that pesky battery and the voltage regulator.  I'm happy to say that with a new battery and the regulator keeping things properly charged when the engine is running things are looking brighter in the cabin :)

We're on our 4th day here in this canalside stop and haven't run the engine in that time.  Weather has been a bit hit and miss with sun / clouds / rain and the batteries are still at 97%.  Nothing to complain about there. When the solar is running at full tilt it puts about 15 amps into the batteries.

Getting the 60kg battery in and out was a bit of a challenge but not insurmountable.  4" square hardwood lying around with a couple of stainless fittings and some spare rope and I had a really usable pulley system.

Raising and lowering the battery one stair at a time means that it's always under control.

And eventually it makes it here.

And this is the voltage regulator that was only charging at a maximum of 13.8 volts.

The regulator has now been replaced with one that gets the voltage up to 14.5 volts.  The end result is that instead of us arriving at a marina and plugging in the power and immediately charging the batteries, when we get there and plug in the batteries are already charged. 

Taking out the garbage

So we've been seeing these bins and never knew how they got emptied until the other day. Some of them are for general public use others are for residents and you need to use a card to get the thing to open so you can drop in the rubbish.

And this is what it looks like underneath.

And we all know what happens to the rubbish in Netherlands.

Utrecht

On our way in to Utrecht (coming from north to south) on the Vecht river.  These guys on the houseboats really have the life.

We were able to go all the way through town however there's nowhere to stop and I really had my work cut out. All of the bridges are 'only just' and we had the canvas cover down. Oh yeah, and it started to rain just as we went through the first bridge.
Anyway, we got through the whole series of bridges (about 20 from memory) and found a spot where we could tie up for 6 hours and then went for a walk in to town. We saw one of these buses on the way in and I managed to get a photo and video on the way back.

Lunch

After a big walk in the morning I figured we were ok for a drink with lunch.  This is just outside of Gouda (famous for the cheese of course) at one of those spots where we can park for free for 3 days.

Evening walks

As part of this health kick we're on we're doing more than 10,000 steps a day.  Start off with 5,000 before breakfast and depending on the day we sometimes need to go for a walk after dinner to get over the 10,000.

This is in Rotterdam at 9.30pm.

Alternator - Voltage Regulator

An update on those batteries.

We have disconnected the dodgy battery from the system and will pull it out of the boat later.  That's going to be interesting because each battery is about 60kg.  More on that when we get around to doing it.

We have now returned to the marina and have charged the batteries today.  What I did notice on the way back here is that with the engine running we were only putting about 30 Amps back in to the batteries.  When we got back here and turned off the motor and plugged in to mains it immediately went up to 58Amps and then over the next couple of hours it dropped off back down to almost nothing.  This is exactly what you would expect if the voltage applied was higher with the battery charger than that which is applied with the alternator.

Cutting the story short a little bit, the voltage regulator on the back of the alternator was limiting the voltage output to 13.8 volts.  Now that I have spent 26 Euro and bought a new voltage regulator that is set to 14.7 volts we get the full 50 Amps out of the alternator.

The end result of my 26 Euros is that every hour that we are motoring is going to see an extra 20 Amps go back in to the batteries and it's likely that when we arrive at marinas where we need to pay for power we will be charging the batteries for a much shorter time. Oh yeah, and now it works properly, just like it should.

We're now going to see how we go for a couple of days with just two batteries.  If it works out ok we'll run with this until the end of this season and plan on new batteries for next year.  If it doesn't work out, we'll then you'll get to hear about how we remove 3 x 60kg batteries and put in another 3 x 60kg batteries.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing

Now that we've had a couple of days away from the dock we've worked out that one of the house batteries has a problem.

We have 3 x 220AH AGM batteries for the 'house' and 2 x 100AH batteries for the engine.

We have noticed over the last couple of days that the voltage is getting a bit low and when we tested each of the batteries in turn this morning they seemed fine.  When we put them under load however one of the batteries immediately dropped down to 10 volts.  Culprit found!

So, with the benefit of hindsight while we stayed at the dock for the last week doing a bunch of cleaning and reconfiguring of the boat we really should have had the shore power plugged in for a couple of days and then run on batteries for a couple of days. That way we would have found this earlier.  Anyway, not a big issue but we'll go back tomorrow and get it sorted before we go any further.

2018 plan

This years plan.
We'll leave here and head through the canals on our way south down to Maastricht before turning around and coming back on the Maas river. We'll follow that north and then around Nijmegen and Arnhem we cross over the Waal (Rhine) and in to the IJssel and up through Zwolle.

We'll get there by about mid July and then we are off to London for a weekend to catch up with Stephen and Jodie and Vincent.  Stephen and Jodie get to go to a show in west end while we babysit Vincent :)
Belinda and I will also get to go to see The Lion King on the Sunday and then we head back to NL on the Monday.
From there we'll catch up with Justin and Trudy and the kids for a week or so before starting a slow trip back down to Rotterdam. When we get back to Rotterdam I want to do some testing to obtain my ICC and CEVNI endorsement for boating on the French canals.  Next year, Belgium and possible France depending on how we go.

Paint touchups

Just touching up a few sports before we go back in the water for the summer.

Rotterdam

Rotterdam Centraal railway station 

The trees and greenery you can see at the top is one big TV screen.

 And on a Sunday morning it's almost deserted

Thailand

Now this really does need to get cleaned up a bit. We've spent the last week in Thailand on our way back over to Europe. Ardella has spent the winter in Rotterdam and we'll be there tomorrow night.  We're staying in the middle of Rotterdam on Thursday night and then hiring a car and getting out to the marina on Friday. We'll see the boat before it goes back in to the water in the afternoon and then we think we'll spend the next week or two own that way.

Pictures of Thailand to come ;-)