Folding Radar Mast

One day when we get to the canals we're going to need to have this folding mast. The fixed mast at the moment means that we need about 3.6 metres clearance under any bridges. By the time we've got this fitted and then fold the radar , TV and VHF antennae down in one movement we'll only need about 2.4 metres.

That means that a whole bunch of French canals are now possible and assuming we get back to Netherlands at some stage where we would have had to wait for bridges to be opened we'll be able to go straight thru.

The job now (after I've gone and bought the right tools) is to remove everything from the old one and then refit.

Guest accommodation

Visitors accommodation. Trudy and Justin arrived for a couple of days and this is the second time we've been able to try the additional bedding. We have definitely got better with the air conditioner and certainly comfortable enough for a couple of days.

It's been a lot more convenient this time as we're on a dock connected to the mainland. No ferries for us.

Morning walks and flex-a-rail

Most mornings we have been walking and getting in 5,000 steps before breakfast. I've got to admit that breakfast here in Slovenia has regularly consisted of coffee and a croissant while we're out.
We've kind of settled on two 'locals'. The morning local is pretty close to the Spar supermarket and the coffee (latte macchiatto) is the closest we can get to a flat white.
For the full price of EUR 5.80 we get two glasses of water, two coffees, a creme croissant and a jam croissant. Not bad.

I digress.

This morning we walked a couple of kms to a sailmaker hoping to be able to get some more flex-a-rail. As it turns out he's on holidays this week so I said I'd send him an email.

This is what the flex-a-rail is used for.

And this is the full version of the shade cloth that we bought from Bunnings in Australia.

The plan is to extend the rail so that it goes up both sides of the boat and when we come back next year we'll probably have another 3 or 4 metres of shade cloth.

Plenty of jobs to do

So yesterday I needed to clean out the grey water holding tank. There's an electronic sensor that detects when there is water and automatically turns on the pump. When it has pumped enough water out, the pumps stops. Sound simple, doesn't it.
Not quite, the sludge ends up providing the electronic contact and the pump keeps going and going and going. Anyway, I got sick of doing a quick clean every couple of weeks and this time I spent an hour or so down there giving the tank the best clean it's had in 8 years. Hopefully it'll be a while before I need to do it again.

We also discovered that the bottom part of the swim ladder was attached to the fibreglass with self tapping screws. Not ideal and two of the four were loose and couldn't be tightened.

This morning instead of the normal morning walk of 5,000 steps before breakfast we took a bus ride to Koper and walked to the chandlers and picked up some bolts and locknuts.

While we were in Koper we clocked up the 5,000 steps so it was time for breakfast. Coffee and a croissant each with this view.

While we were in Koper we also did a little shopping, had lunch and then came home to finish off those jobs.

Planning for next year already

At this stage (as always, subject to changes) we think we've worked out what we're going to do next year.
We know that we like puttering along in the canals and we know that the Italian canals don't really cut it when we compare them to the Dutch and French canals. While the beautiful clear (and great temperature) waters of the Mediterranean are awesome to swim in, we kind of miss the 'just tie up to the dock in the middle of town' that happens in Netherlands and France.

So, where to from here?

We had already decided that although there is a lot of Greece that we haven't seen it is probably a lot more of what we have already seen. Islands, mountains, hot, dry, dusty, all that sort of stuff. So as we head south we would be turning right and heading towards France rather than turning left and heading towards Greece.
Next question (and I know you're probably sick of hearing about the really difficult decisions we have to make) was do we go down the Croatian coast or the Italian coast? From all reports there's a whole bunch of nothing on the Italian coast both going south and coming back up the other side. Some really good spots but interspersed by a whole lot of nothing.
Problem with the Croatian side is that when we have got to the bottom we need to cross back to Italy before we go around the bottom and then back up. The crossing is only about 80km but once we've done it we still have about 2,500km to go before we get to the France border.
Or ...... we could put the boat on a truck and do it the fast way.
We've explored the option of just crossing Italy from Venice to Pisa and it's pretty expensive. Apparently each province that you go thru has to be negotiated separately and they all have their own rules. The general consensus seems to be sail your boat to Slovenia, truck thru Austria to France and then get back in the water there.
Or ..... we could just go from Slovenia straight to Germany and then start on the canals and rivers from there.

I've cheated a bit on the map and used Stuttgart but really we're looking at Ludwigsburg which is about 10km north and then cruising up the Neckar River toward the Rhine. From there we can jump across in to the French canals or continue on the Rhine. Who knows? 

Long awaited update

So Belinda started doing some drafts a couple of weeks ago and hasn't progressed any further. She's busy working on some legal thing for Necia so I figured I might as well start to try and catch up while she's busy.
Today (after the clutch has been fixed) we went from Izola where we are for the next couple of weeks to Portoroz. We left here on electric and got all the way there using the electric motor only. Batteries were discharged to 60% when we got there but I was really happy that everything just worked.

The main reason for going was to go to the chandlery (kind of like Bunnings for boats) that we went to last week and return the water pump service kit that was the wrong one. Anyway, we accomplished that and bought more mooring line that Belinda has been wanting for a while and a new Italian flag.
(When you are visiting a country you are supposed to fly a small courtesy flag in addition to your own flag of the country where your boat is registered). The Italian flag that was on the boat when we bought it was well and truly past it's prime. In a couple of weeks when we return to Italy we will need this.
Coming back we used the diesel engine and that worked really well motoring and charging the batteries from 60% up to about 80% and then the generator part seemed to think that the batteries were already fully charged. Anyway, just another job that I'll need to add to the list.
On the way back we stopped at our regular swimming spot for a half hour or so to cool down. Yes that European heatwave you've been hearing about has been pretty warm.
Anyway, a good day finished off with some work and then we'll go out for some dinner soon.

Diesel Speed Test

So this morning on the way from Marina Primero to Grado we got to open it up and see how well the diesel performs with WOT (Wide Open Throttle).

Chart

This is a pretty standard test that is designed to make sure that the propeller is sized correctly.

Anyway, the results are in although I did only do a one way run and it was with a slight head wind.

1,500 rpm = 3.0 ltr/hr = 5.5 knots (10.2 kmh)
2,000 rpm = 6.3 ltr/hr = 6.8 knots (12.5 kmh)
2,500 rpm = 11 ltr/hr = 7.9 knots (14.6 kmh)
3,000 rpm = 16 ltr/hr = 9.0 knots (16.6 kmh)
WOT 3,700 rpm = 30 ltr /hr = 11.9 knots (21.5 kmh)

So, for practical purposes 3,000 rpm will be considered flat out because we'll be able to keep that up all day.

Electric motor test to come but the sweet spot already looks to be about 3.5 knots.

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.