Six Months in a Leaky Boat!
We've made it back to the dry dock for another voyage! In a few weeks we will be dipped into the St Johns river to begin our 5 month romp on Butterfly to Bahamas and Beyond!
| Vessel Name: | Butterfly |
| Vessel Make/Model: | Columbia33 |
| Hailing Port: | Palatka FL |
05 March 2012
29 January 2012
28 December 2011
21 December 2011
21 December 2011
21 December 2011 | St Augustine, FL
01 December 2011 | San Mateo FL
01 May 2010
24 March 2010
18 March 2010
14 March 2010 | Ocean. Between WPB and Miami
03 March 2010
18 February 2010 | Gibson's Boatyard
13 February 2010 | Gibson's Boatyard...still.
06 February 2010
04 February 2010
24 January 2010 | London Ontario
Recent Blog Posts
29 January 2012
Of Coconuts and Lobster
Most people have a highly romanticized view of sailing. "Oh how it would be lovely, to buy
28 December 2011
OH the days of the great lament!
Hope everyone had a nice christmas back home! We finally enjoyed our christmas dinner last
21 December 2011 | St Augustine, FL
Heading South!!
After much toiling and also much waiting (for weather) we have at last made it the 60 mile stretch North up the St Johns river and are now heading south on the intracoastal waterway (hereinafter referred to as the ICW, or as the locals call it, "The INTERcoastal) "YAY!! We stopped in Green Cove Springs [...]
Inverters
21 December 2011
Karl
There are currently only 2 surviving inverters on Butterfly and neither can run the wet vac;
The 400W Cobra died trying...
The remaining 2 inverters are small but each have their own advantages... One is built into a Xantrax Power pack. shot battery or not - it's still a convenient light & cigarette plug!
The other is a cheap n' dirty 175 watt X-Power. The great thing about it is its standby draw is only 50mA at 12v so it needs not be switched on and off whenever something 110v is needed. It had a small quirk that needed mending... Whenever a laptop power supply was plugged into the one of the outlets in the boat* the overload would trip because of the capacitive spike. A red light would come on and no more power would be produced. Below is the mod to keep me from having to manually turn it off and on to reset the device. Read on if you're interested. If you've read this far you probably are....
When the inverter goes into a FAULT state it stops producing any AC and a red LED lights up. Since I could not afford to ruin yet another inverter, I needed to design a circuit that had very little risk of destroying the inverter when used. The idea was simple; when the red LED turns on, open the ON\OFF switch circuit for a moment. This was accomplished with a very small 12v relay (since only 30mA ever goes over that swich) 10v is put out on one of the IC chips when a fault occurs. This voltage, over a diode would click a small relay. A 1000uF cap in parallel with the relay would hold it for a brief moment while the NC (normally closed) contacts open and simulate the on / off switch toggling.
The 400W Cobra died trying...
The remaining 2 inverters are small but each have their own advantages... One is built into a Xantrax Power pack. shot battery or not - it's still a convenient light & cigarette plug!
The other is a cheap n' dirty 175 watt X-Power. The great thing about it is its standby draw is only 50mA at 12v so it needs not be switched on and off whenever something 110v is needed. It had a small quirk that needed mending... Whenever a laptop power supply was plugged into the one of the outlets in the boat* the overload would trip because of the capacitive spike. A red light would come on and no more power would be produced. Below is the mod to keep me from having to manually turn it off and on to reset the device. Read on if you're interested. If you've read this far you probably are....
When the inverter goes into a FAULT state it stops producing any AC and a red LED lights up. Since I could not afford to ruin yet another inverter, I needed to design a circuit that had very little risk of destroying the inverter when used. The idea was simple; when the red LED turns on, open the ON\OFF switch circuit for a moment. This was accomplished with a very small 12v relay (since only 30mA ever goes over that swich) 10v is put out on one of the IC chips when a fault occurs. This voltage, over a diode would click a small relay. A 1000uF cap in parallel with the relay would hold it for a brief moment while the NC (normally closed) contacts open and simulate the on / off switch toggling.
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