Electrical System

On Friday while at Oppenhuizen I tried the 24 volt battery charger (which charges the engine batteries) and it went up to 32 volts.  Not a good thing as this will destroy the batteries pretty quickly.
A bit of searching and I found AquaSolar just a 600m walk away. I was able to organise for someone to come out to the boat in the afternoon and run some tests on the electrical system.

End result of all that is that yes the charger was stuffed.  Dutch / English doesn't really matter, stuffed is stuffed. Also, both the 24 volt alternator and the 12 volt alternator are working ok but the wire from the 24 volt alternator to the starter was way too small and the 12 volt alternator wire to the batteries was also way too small.

For the technically minded the formula goes something like this (Amps x cable length) / (voltage drop as a % x volts) = diameter of the wire.

Anyway, I had noticed previously that we were really only getting about 20 amps out of the 12 volt alternator when we're running the motor.  63 Euro later for some cables which I fitted myself and we are now able to charge at 50 amps.  It means that in 24 hours when we consume about 100Ah, instead of it taking 5 hours of running the engine to charge again we will be able to do that in 2 hours.  Reality is we never sit there with the engine running just to charge the batteries but when we plug in at the next marina we won't be charging batteries.

 The blue wire shows the thickness of the old wire.

And the red wire is the size of the new wire.

Oh yeah, we paid 119 Euro for a new 24 volt charger that we will leave in the box until we need it.  I've tested it but in theory we should never need it.

Oppenhuizen

We're still in Sneek (kind of) and have been for a few days. I realise now that I need to be a little more specific about where we are staying so that we can go back over time and work out which marinas we have been in so that if we want to come back we know where to go.

I think its probably going to be a good thing if I include links to their website if at all possible.  Anyway, we've been staying here since last Thursday.  Main criteria was 'did it have a laundry' and the answer to that was yes.  Preferred criteria was 'electricity included and decent internet' and they scored on both counts.  At this time of year electricity included is good as the main heating we have is a little electric fan heater and we needed to get stuck in to doing some work on the internet.
Thursday turned out to be beautiful weather and the first load of washing was already dry by the time third was coming out of the machine.

A big old dutch farmhouse that has the office and home at the front and 6 apartments as well as toilets and showers for the marina and a café / bar.

We've been parked on the 'terrace' for 5 days and loved it.  Water and electricity included in the 14 Euros per night (inc tourist tax)

Sneek

Moved up to here so that we were closer to the shops.  Really no good reason to come up here but hey why not.  Same 'marina' as the other place in Sneek so same cost (Euro 17.50 per night) includes electricity and tourist tax for two.

Sneek

We spent a Monday and Tuesday nights here in Sneek

Not a bad spot right in town.

Transmission problems

Last year we did about 70 engine hours in total and we discovered that we had a leak in the transmission.  We went through about 5 litres of oil in 50 hours of engine running time.  We had some problems with it selecting gear when cold but mainly the issue was excessive oil leaking (ending up in the bilge) and a little bit of a milky white residue at the top of the dipstick.

The milky white bit is moisture mixing with the oil and I think that we still have a problem with the oil cooler letting a bit of coolant in to the transmission however it is a very small amount.  Something that we will monitor.

Main issue was the leak and Jacques suggested this place in Ijlst.  He also rang them for us on the Saturday and booked us in for the Monday morning.

The white powdery looking stuff is just because it's really cold after spraying with some degreaser.   Just to the right of the linkage is where the oil was pooling after leaking from the o-ring.
Apparently if these Borg Warner transmissions are leaking its really only one of three places.  The front seal ($$$), the rear seal (also $$$) or the o-ring which is very easy.

End result is one o-ring, one gasket, one new split pin and 2 litres of oil and an hour and a half later I part with 130 euros.  Very happy with this result!

Back to St Nik

We came here to St Nyk last year while waiting for the guys to finish their holidays so they could fix the exhaust and met some wonderful people. Came back again this year to catch up with Jacques and Ilona who lived in Canberra at one time. This shot is the official naming of the dock 'Steiger Hetloo' (rough translation is 'party dock') on the Friday.

Followed up on Saturday night with the official opening of the season and the choir singing late in to the night

And we're on the boat again

We got to Lemmer by about 0930 this morning and started to sort things out. Met up with Arjan and Joop to discuss things that they'd done over the winter and then we drove up to Workum with them to look at their new facilities. Very nice. Back to Lemmer in the afternoon and unloaded the car, then went shopping. Belinda now has a NL sim and phone number. Finished unpacking and stowed all of the shopping. My Wi-Fi antennae works like a bought one. Inside the boat just using my laptop and I get to see 6 Wi-Fi hotspots. Connected to the outdoor antenna and I can see 61 hotspots! I call that a success. Anyway, tomorrow we're off to Ikea for a few things and then we'll return the hire car and catch a bus back. We're looking at spending a couple of nights here in Lemmer then going up to St Nik to hang out for a week or so. One of the bonuses with that place is that we pay a flat rate of 2 euro per night for electricity. Means we can leave the heater on 24/7 if we need to. We're planning on doing a bit of work while we're there so we can catch up while the weather is still a bit variable.

That promised catch up

When we got EverRest we always had the plan of going up and down the east coast of Australia until we got bored and then come to Europe and do some canal boating.

I wont say we got bored quicker than we thought, more that we figured it was going to be easier to do it sooner rather than later.  Shortening that story a bit we decided in December 2015 that we would put the boat on the market and see what happened.  End result from that was we settled on a sale in mid April 2016 and booked tickets for coming to Europe around the same time.

We flew over to London in early July and spent a week looking around London and Norwich before heading over to Netherlands.  A couple of weeks driving around and then found Ardella, had a survey done, put in an offer and then she was ours.

There was a couple of things that needed to be fixed and of course by then everyone was on their summer holidays. We motored a couple of hours to a decent marina where we could wait a couple of weeks before she came out of the water and had the work done.  From there we stayed mainly in the Friesland province for 7 weeks or so logging 70 engine hours.  A very nice introduction to canal boating in Netherlands and met some lovely (and helpful) people.

At the end of October (really too cold by then) we left the boat in Lemmer and went to Wales to watch the Wallabies play Wales at Cardiff before heading home to work for the summer.

While we've been back in Australia working for the summer we've caught up with family and friends, birthdays, xmas, a funeral, a wedding, a lot of work and we've also had the bathroom on the boat redone.  A crazy toilet that you needed to be a contortionist to use has been fixed completely and a shower added.  The underwater side of things has been sanded back, primed and repainted so it should be good for a couple of years.  Over here instead of leaving the boat in the water all year round we pull it out of the water, it gets a wash down and then goes in to a shed for the winter.

One last job (well, it's a boat, there's never a last job) is to have the gearbox looked at.  We're leaking oil at the rate of about half a litre every 5 hrs of running time.  Means the bilge gets extra oil and we need to pump it out every so often and each day that we're moving I need to get under the floor and top up the oil.  A bit of a pain but manageable.  Worse case is that we will motor to a place around the centre of Holland and have the gearbox removed and overhauled.  The boat wont need to come out of the water and it should only take a week or so.

I think that will probably bring you up to date.

Heading back to Europe

Left Canberra at 11.30 pm last night on a Singapore Air flight and got in early this morning.  We actually flew over Berri about 01.00 am before turning north and heading direct for Singapore.

Got lucky and our room was ready at 8am even though officially check in is at 2pm.
Anyway, had a shower and a bit of a lie down Belinda managed a nap.

Wandered the streets and had a nice local lunch at 1130.  We're now waiting for the afternoon thunderstorm to finish before we head across the road for a beer and dinner.

Sorry, no photos.

Ardella

A lot has happened since we last updated.  More info on that to come but the short story is that we have ended up selling EverRest in Mackay and buying Ardella in Netherlands.  Here she is.