Captain’s log
Dateline: 21.08.2022

North Captiva

Got invited to go along with a bunch of friends to North Captiva on a 27’ power catamaran. Helped me get a better idea of what’s gonna be in my way when I take Curious Cat out of Dawson Canal the rest of the way.

Many areas around here have less than 4’ of depth, a couple of spots are only 2’ deep in high tide — all that makes it extremely hard for my cat with almost 4’ of draft to find her way out into the ocean. I’m likely going to Charlestown, SC next, to avoid storms and get some place to dock and continue working on my boat, but first need to get out of Florida.

My friends gave me a tour of the island on their awesome little golf cart. North Captiva is a very interesting place, there’re almost no gasoline cars in there, 99% of vehicles are golf carts. There’s a landing strip for small personal aircrafts, and basically lots of rich folks own houses there that they rent out to yuppies. That’s also the downside of the place, the crowd is extremely transitory, young, loaded with their parents’ money, and usually drunk. On the bright side, lots of beautiful houses and exceptionally clean air. The only way to get there is by plane or boat, and they get groceries delivered to them by boats, trash is taken out on a small barge. Tons of gopher turtles, I picked one small guy up, it started hissing at me, I put it back down, and then I fed it some leaves, very lovely little animals.

About a hundred years ago a big storm has split that island into North Captiva and Captiva, basically washed away huge part of land. Very unique place, too bad it’s very shallow around it, not for big boats.

Washers for solar MPPT charge controllers

Mounting those Victron charge controllers is a whole story. The current situation is that I’m putting them temporarily inside the cabin, until my diesel engine, hydraulics, and genset are replaced with a bunch of LiFePo4 batteries in the engine room and I’m able to finally move most if not all of my electronics there, all being neatly ordered and safely mounted, protected from lightning, moisture, thieves.

But now is now, I have to mount them close to my AGM batteries, so that the battery bank remains charged. Function over form.

The mounting cutouts on radiators are about 8mm in diameter, and the amount of room for washers above those slots is somewhere close to 14mm. It doesn’t have to be precise, but I’m probably not going to just use whatever washers I find in one of my little plastic bags, and get carbon fiber washers instead to protect the anodization/paint on those radiators — I don’t want to scratch them in case I’ll have to sell those soon for any reason, plus composite washers are lighter and usually not (as) conductive.

From the chart on this page, M6 seems to make the most sense. I’ll need some kind of short M6 screws or bolts for those, they’re probably just gonna be stainless steel, imperial size, bought from one of the local stores. Ideally I should go with bolts that have no thread where they touch the radiators, and hold those with locking nuts from the other side of the honeycomb wall. But whatever I get, as long as they hold my MPPT charge controllers in one place and don’t leave scratches on the aluminum radiators, I’m gonna feel accomplished.

The current level of charge is at below 11 Volts, and it should be over 14. My VHF radio plainly refuses to work with the voltage being this low, and I have no cord connected to the shore to charge the boat. Not the most responsible person, I know, but I had other stuff to do. Lots of other stuff to do — the boat wasn’t able to move and almost none of the bilge pumps were working. At least I have my excuses ready.

In all honesty, I’m getting composite washers instead of 316 or aluminum primarily to see how strong those are, maybe will replace most of stainless ones I find on the boat with carbon, should save some weight. Or at least go with aluminum, hastelloy, or titanium. Stainless is nice and all, but very heavy, and it all adds up.

I hate imperial. Metric is just so much cleaner and easier to read, write, memorize, calculate. I swear I will replace everything with metric on this boat. Really dislike feet and inches, not to mention all those 5/16" and 4’ 2" measurements, it’s just so much more ugly, less usable, and less precise.

Bolts and nuts come in nylon and polypropylene, but those both are plastics and aren’t really that strong. Polypropylene is supposedly stronger than nylon, but becomes less stable at only 80°C, could in theory be achieved by those radiators on a hot day. Aside from material’s strength, I don’t want to inhale whatever fumes those plastics emit even if they don’t melt — this is not for mounting wires after all, radiators are meant to get hot. Hence I’ve decided to go with titanium.

Those M6 washers are 1.5mm thick, the radiator is about 3.5mm thick, and those honeycombs I’m mounting the whole thing onto are about 18mm thick. If we assume I’ll need washers on the other side, and possibly washers between radiators and honeycombs, then it’s 1.5mm + 3.5mm + 1.5mm + 18mm + 1.5mm = 26mm, and then some length needs to be left for the nut, even more in case I go with locking nuts. This locking nut is almost 8mm long, means the minimum screw or bolt length I need would be 26mm + 8mm = 34mm. Luckily, these exist. The bad news is that it’s over $7 per screw, the good news is today is the first day of the rest of my life and hence why not splurge on some fancy scews. 40mm is when Allied Titanium’s socket head cap screws lose full length thread, so couldn’t go with their 35mm, Can always make it shorter later, but who knows what else I’m gonna use that screw for in the future, extra 5mm of length won’t hurt.

Captain’s log
Dateline: 22.08.2022

You need us, you give us a call!

A TowBoatUS RIB came by my boat today. I was hoping it was that captain Ryan who refused to tow me with trees and boats in the way when I needed their help, so now I really wanted to see the look on his face and hear what he has to say about me being neatly docked past that point.

It was some other guy. He waved. Here’s our conversation:

  • Him: That’s a badass boat!
  • Me: Thanks!
  • Him: Yours?
  • Me: Yep.
  • Him: That’s awesome.
  • Him: You need us, you give us a call!

I nodded and chuckled a little when he said that, but wasn’t laughing at him, and he’s got no idea what the other captain told me and how useless TowBoatUS has been for me overall.

And, yes, it is a badass boat.

Fat cat

Inspired by shallow areas that I witnessed yesterday, I’ll try my best to make the boat lighter.

The current weight loss program consists of getting rid of extra fresh water outside of my main tank, no solar showers, nothing that adds lots of weight and isn’t part of the long-term plan for the boat. Will try to fix and sell the 60 lbs gasoline outboard that I have sitting in my cockpit before I depart, and then things like old microwave, gas oven and stovetop — also need to go, either CraigsList or trash.

Every inch of draft counts, it can make a difference between getting stuck somewhere and not. I can always get more fresh water when I dock somewhere in Charleston or Tampa.

And those extra 20 gallons of diesel aren’t helping either. But have to have it, my fuel tank is only 30 gallons.

Feeling powerless

Down to 10 volts. It should be at least 12 for things to properly work around here.

The fresh water pump sounds very sad right now, VHF doesn’t even work at all. But who needs fresh water or comms when your laptop can still be charged!

Titanium! Part Deux

Spoke with Troy from Bob & Annie’s Boatyard today. He said that original stainless steel that you can find on 1970s boats rarely gets any corrosion, while almost all 304 or even 316 stainless steel you can buy today gets rusty almost right away. Most likely it’s chinesium/thaitanium but stamped as 316, made not up to the spec. Sad.

Found a very sweet little article regarding use of titanium in sailboats, or rather, lack of thereof.

I’ve pretty much set my mind on switching to titanium when it comes to not just standing rigging, but also things like bolts on battcars, eye straps, locks, cleats, lifelines, and all thru-hull fittings. Basically, the rule of thumb is if it can’t be carbon fiber or aluminum, then it will be titanium.

So far here’s the list of companies I’ve found to source titanium parts from:

  • Allied Titanium — the titanium juggernaut, almost everything is Grade 5, but seems like their products are manufactured in China. Could still be good, not trying to say anything, but there’s an option for making custom orders, US- or EU-made for extra money.
  • Gemlux — another company that produces things like thru-hull fittings, hinges, cleats, etc. No idea what grade of titanium they use, but emailed them, hope they tell. Update: they promptly replied next morning; Grade 2, made in Thailand.
  • Titan Marine Hardware — these guys have titanium hose clamps (not constant tension though), thru-hulls, and many other goodies. Don’t seem to be as shiny, but that’s probably just sandblast finish. It’s fine, being too flashy can spoil trouble.
  • Titanium Precision Parts — not a wide selection, they only have like ten marine-specific products, but the whole catalog isn’t miniscule.
  • Spectore — very evil name, something from James Bond movies. No idea why their fasteners are Grade 2 but everything else seems to be Grade 5. They even sell something called Black Titanium — told you they were creepy.

Various RC hobby stores, drone shops, dirtbike and bicycle stores, Amazon, eBay, and Alibaba often sell interesting parts like drilled bolts and nuts. Unlikely better or cheaper than what I can get from companies listed above, and those cutouts will only make it harder to clean the hardware.

Captain’s log
Dateline: 23.08.2022

Finally using my solar panels

Haven’t mounted Victron BlueSolar MPPT controllers yet, but couldn’t use fresh water pump anymore so had to connect things together quick and dirty just to see how well everything works. And also really want to take a shower and have my fridge working again — drinking warm bottled water in Florida summer isn’t exactly refreshing.

The voltage level showed below 9V last night, wasn’t enough to even properly power my LED lighting, surprised they turned on at all.

4 AWG cables I bought for my PV setup turned out to be a bit too thick for those controllers’ openings, had to remove a couple of strands. Black (negative) cables seem to have way more smaller strands than red (positive). Only had to remove a couple from the red cable, while the black one had to lose like 15–20% of its thickness, weird.

Terminals are crimped on them. I assumed people who made those cables knew what they were doing. I was wrong. It’s not too hard to remove terminals from those cables if you pull real hard, and the spot where they stripped the cable has some of the copper strands damaged, so that’s 3.9 AWG right there. If one of those strands falls off and into my charge controller, then I’ll likely need to buy a new controller. Will DIY cables from this point forward, can’t trust anyone. And no crimping on my boat, only solder.

The voltage has gone up to 11 volts within about thirty minutes, that’s a good sign. I have half of my 0.68KW photovoltaic system hooked up right now, only one out of two MPPT controllers used. My multimeter shows something like 63V from those two panels, pretty good. I’m also only hooked up right now to one battery, and I really should charge across the battery bank. Lyall from Sun Powered Yacht said that, "You are better to charge across the battery bank like you say so eg pos bat 1 and neg bat 3. It’s no way near as efficient to put them both on battery 1 and it ’waterfalls’ down through the bank". I’ll get there, just first need to properly mount these babies and craft cables of correct gauge and with nice soldered terminals.