I can feel the W-word!
01 November 2010
• Halifax NS Living on the Dirt
by Mike/ Bloody cold!
First day of November and I am getting back in the daily grind thing. Part of me is going "Yippie-yahoo!", no more boredom, but another part of me is still saying, "O poop. I wish we were back aboard Nelleke and following the other cruiser snowbirds south!" Ah well. We will start up again in the spring. I have to keep telling myself that especially in the face of the grey overcast skies and dropping temperatures. Brrrrrrr! My thin blood from two winters down south is not up to it.
Peri finally put his weight on all four legs again today and scampered around a little bit. I have been trying to rein him in a bit so he doesn't aggravate whatever his problem is but it's tough to hold a little dog down when he is in a happy mood. Almost a song in that phrase somewhere, isn't there? In fact, by the end of the day he was capering around like a puppy. Yay!
Besides the cold weather, the worst part of being ashore is the constant exposure to the news. I know that's a really strange thing for someone who had spent the last ten years of his military career being directly involved and attuned to the least little thing that happened not only in Canada but also around the world, but national security issues and common or garden variety murders and various assault flavours are different matters altogether. And to top that off there is the hate mongering political style from the mid-terms south of the border....... Thanks but I have started to avoid the TV news. Give me a good old sci-fi TV show or slasher flick anytime. At least I know that's fiction and can turn it off or change channels. I am really looking forward to not having the temptation of turning on the one-eyed God when we get back aboard. I know that I could do it here too but who does?
Our previous post mentioned that I have an idea for a hydro generator for boats and our friend Ken from Silverheels III has been good enough to send me an e-mail and some posts where he mentions some fo the difficulties with that means of getting power to your cruising lifestyle: most people that have then aren't satisfied; they aren't and efficient means of generating power; they add drag; etc. Ken taught technology at Ryerson Polytechnic in Toronto and I have a high respect for his thoughts, but I think that I'll provide a little more detail on my ideas, just to further the discussion.
First, I quite agree that most of the other hydro generator systems that I have seen are not efficient and most users aren't satisfied with the product. For one thing they almost all are trailed behind the boat on a cable which transmits the turning moment up to a generator somewhere aboard. This is an awfully long "arm" through which to try to send the torque to say nothing of the fact that it can't get too deep below the surface and ends up making a lot of noise and acts as a fish lure. Even the one that I have seen that has the generator in the water with the prop is still towed behind the boat and the design engineer had to develop a means to keep the body of the unit still and let the blade rotate.
At the risk of giving away any secrets, my idea is to have the hydro fan attached to the lower drive unit of an outboard and have it mounted inside the boat and protrude through the hull like a sail drive. With proper positioning such as behind the keel it will always be under water and will transmit the torque to an alternator just like the one that we have on the engine and should generate about 15-20A at 24VDC at 5 knots. Yes, it won't generate anything when the boat is standing still, but for us I am looking for a few more amps while we are under way. We do have a fairly hight power consumption but when we are at anchor or on a mooring our 550 watts of solar panel and the 400 watt wind generator does keep us mostly abreast of the power needs when there is sunshine and a steady breeze, but when we are underway and the autohelm is running they don't quite provide enough juice and I would really like to be able to sail without the engine running. Granted there will be a little more drag, but we aren't racing in the Volvo Round the World Race.
There. I have given away my plan, but if I know me, and I do, I probably won't even get around to putting the idea into a business plan anyway so if anyone else wants to give it a try too, fill your boots. Anyway, Ken, do you follow the idea? Any thoughts?
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