Corrosion

So we've got this gadget called the DDI (Data Display Interface) which is supposed to tell us all sorts of really cool information about what's happening on the boat with regards to the electrics and stuff.

Anyway, when we bought the boat Grega who did the survey told us that the existing DDI instrument needed replacing so we had that done but for some reason it's always been showing an error even though everything seems to be working correctly.

Cutting a long story short, the CANBUS signals are not correct for some reason and I think that is why I'm getting errors.

Today I went investigating more and found the connectors that I'm pointing at in the first picture have a heap of corrosion. Tomorrow I'll find out but I'm pretty sure the corrosion in those plugs is the problem. Should be an easy fix, just get to them with a wire brush and then spray with WD40. I'll let you know.

Height challenges

A down side to having all these gadgets is that they take up room.

We've worked out now that the top of the VHF antennae is 4.14m from the water line.

I can unscrew the antennae and then we come down to 3.47m but if we had a folding mast then potentially we could get it down to almost 2.5m.

To put that into perspective, Ardella was only 3.6m with the whole canopy up. By lowering the canopy but not the windows we were able to get that down to 2.7m

Anyway, we know that new (even now) a folding mast is an option for the 33 so we've asked the local Greenline dealer to provide a price.  We'll know more later but I think it'sgoing to be one of those things that's not really optional.

More on that trip to Grado

Because I seem to spend most of my time writing about problems and fixes I thought it about time I put some good news on here. I took this first video while we running on electric going through the backwaters on our way to Grado. We're doing about 3.5 knots which translates to (3.5 x 1.85) about 6.5 kmh.

David was silly enough to ask how things were going so while I was talking to him I also took this video. When we got to Grado we discovered we weren't able to get under the bridge so we stopped at a vacant berth at the end of a dock and found the right local who let us stay there for a couple of hours while we shopped.

Some of the really nice things Volkswagen did with this engine

This photo is a repeat of an earlier photo but this time we can ignore the red light. I wanted to highlight the yellow button at the top of the picture.

If you zoom in you'll be able to see that it says 'Oil Sump Pump'. When it's time for an oil change, after warming up the engine, I untangle the 8mm diameter hose and put that into a container and hold down the orange button until it finishes emptying the oil. The black screw top thing just underneath the hose is the oil filter and after unscrewing the top I lift out the filter.  Job done!

Success (?) hopefully

So far, so good. Today, on our third attempt we got out of the marina without blowing a fuse. We actually followed the red line on the way to Grado to fill up with diesel and do some shopping, spend a couple of hours there and then followed the green line home.

Even though we filled up with diesel we did the entire trip on the electric motor.

Left the dock at about 9am and took about 1hr45m at about 3.5 knots to get to a service station that was next to the water and next to the road. The good part about these service stations is that the fuel price doesn't have that 'marine' tax and you're pretty sure to have fresh fuel. We filled up and then moved further round towards town. That's when we discovered that the bridge is just a little bit too low. Anyway, we found a vacant berth on the end of the dock and went in search of someone who owned it. Found a guy who spoke Italian and German but not a scratch of English but about 45 minutes later a guy turned up and said 'No Problemo' to us staying for a couple of hours while we did some shopping.

The main batteries had dropped to 66% during the trip there and by the time we were ready to leave again the solar panels had topped them back up to 85%.

Uneventful trip back and we were down to 63% by the time we had docked. All in all, very happy.

Learning all about a Greenline

So we're still in Grado (by design) learning more about the boat.  All good to know but sometimes it would be nice to not need to know.

We now know (ok we think we know) that the reason why the shower doesn't work properly is because the shower tap doesn't allow us to adjust the pressure and the temperature separately. ie. The more pressure you want (so that the pump doesn't cut in and out) the hotter the water is.  If only the tap was like the kitchen and bathroom sink then we'd be right.  That's now on the list of things to fix.

We now know that it rains a lot in Italy at this time of the year.

We now know that if for some reason you turn off the 12 volt system and then turn it on without 'rebooting' the 48 volt system then you will not be able to use the electric motor. Easy enough to do and yes it is written in the manual but in really small print.

We also now know that this red light on the engine is a bad thing.

Because it means that the fuse in here is blown.

And that means that the diesel engine doesn't work AND the electric motor doesn't work either. Good to know!

And we think that the cause of the fuse blowing is the fact that the bow thruster battery had an internal fault. We've fixed that and we'll know tomorrow if we've solved the problem.

On a lighter note we have received the registration papers so we're looking forward to getting out of the marina :)

Voting in Milan

On Friday we hired a car from here in Grado and drove to Milan which is the closest place for us to be able to vote. Yes we could have done a postal vote but it was a 10 day wait for the mail to get to us and then we needed to find another Australian citizen to witness and then 10 days to return. 

Anyway, a 4 hour drive and then we stayed the night before heading back the next day. Hopefully the clown we voted for does a good job for the next 3 years. 

Turned out that the Alpine Troops were celebrating their centenary over the weekend.

 Pretty cool looking car park.

Been a bit of a shi**y week

The joys of owning a second hand boat. There's often a bunch of things that you don't know about.  Like how well the previous owner did the maintenance of things like the holding tank.

Early in the week we discovered we had a blocked holding tank and after a fair bit of work we have managed to clear the blockage and but some acid down there to break down the calcium build up.  All good now but my next job is to clear out the grey water holding tank.

Adding a bunch of photos to a single blog post

Wanted to try something and it looks like it works. (The new thing I wanted to try was just linking to all the photos that have been taken on a single day and showing them all without needed to select each one individually) 

These are all taken on Monday last week (5th May) and show just how cold it was on Sunday. Snow on the mountains in May is pretty much unheard of. Anyway, we've worked out how the heater works.

The last video at the end is the view while having coffee in Grado at about 11 am.