View Transcript

Hide Transcript

Transcript is auto-generated.

it's a good reminder you know i tell

this all the time you being first

uh on land is bragging rights yeah your

new phone

you this new tv new vacuum

new coffee machine whatever it is and

we're all humans it's almost sounds like

we're wired for

always better you know certainly a

portion of us but on a boat you know i'm

always tempering that with

do you there is a lot of cool things

about bragging about being an early

adopter absolutely

there's definitely going to be a

conversation uh you know

talker and people are going to want to

listen into your experiences but

do you want to live those experiences as

a voter

and and that's where i'm always a little

more concerned like

what are you are all the benefits that

you're going to get from this cool new

thing

are they going to outweigh the things

that none of us honestly as smart as

again it doesn't matter who you are

there's always unforeseen problems

um and the challenge is those can be

huge setbacks

huge setbacks not just financially it

could be losing a cruising season yeah

well

you only have five seasons the big

difference between me and uh

most other voters is that i can find a

way to write about

these things and make some money off

them yeah

i mean i wouldn't do it otherwise i'm

actually fairly conservative when it

comes to

equipment for the boat it's one thing

it's equipment to test

and it's a project uh and i'm gonna

pass that knowledge on and and somehow

or another i'm gonna generate some

income

off it it's a totally different thing if

it's equipment for the boat and i

wanted to live with it for the next

decade and then i get pretty

conservative

yeah yeah and and and and even

even myself doing this full-time you

know i'm talking like every living

moment

is boating that's it every there's

nothing else

i'm learning more that i never thought i

didn't know

every year every month and i'm like

those boats as they're getting more and

more cooler

with all these systems eventually you

almost it's not even needing a

technician you almost need a pseudo

tech you know someone who's looking

at the big picture

finding where the problems lie and then

figuring it out for you it's

it's it's it's it's not easy for

everyone some people it's too much

you know it's uh yeah it's just too much

yeah

so i've you heard about what about those

boaters that do have lithium because i

wanted to ask what your thoughts were on

this

some boaters that do have lithium are

now advocating you know the drop-in

replacement

uh agm starter they're putting battery

isolators on the alternator output

as a way to save the alternator when the

house battery decides to cut itself off

due to

a condition that made the bms say you

know what enough

for whatever reasons do you see any sort

of

staggered approach to lithium or do you

in your

i think um yeah if you've got a lithium

battery that does not

control the charging devices then uh

and and it's critical to the boat

operation of the boat

then i i think you do want to have a

mechanism to have a backup battery in

the system

and probably an agm battery i mean

you're going to have some issues

uh getting the right charging voltages

and so on but those are resolvable

uh and i think somewhere you want a

buffer battery in the

in the system just to protect yourself i

mean it would be better to go for

for for a proper system in the first

place you know a fully integrated

system and even better yet is to have

what they call a dual bus system

where you separate the charging side

from the

load side and then for example if the

the battery sees a an overcharged

situation it can disconnect the charging

devices and keep the load

system load side connected so you don't

lose the boat and in the other direction

if it sees an over discharge condition

it can disconnect the loads and keep the

charging devices connected but

yeah we see now you've got two buses

you've got a bunch of relays you've got

quite a bit of extra

kit and installation and expense

so it's i guess it's a question of your

your

level of paranoia yeah and how much

redundancy you want to build into the

system

but yeah if you've got no communication

between the battery and the rest of the

boat

then then i think some kind of a with a

lead acid

buffer in the in the system is a really

good idea yeah we're doing that now too

exactly so i mean the attempt you know

doing it right

there's there's two to me there's people

that can

that want to do it right and can afford

to right

i mean that's that's challenging either

both afford time or money

because both are variables that very few

of us have a lot of

and and then the question is okay maybe

you can't you know you can't you from a

time perspective

or a money perspective you can't you

know you agree

that it's the right thing and then it's

finding that compromise solution

that gets you mostly there but you have

to be

aware i i don't get my clients to sign

on the dotted line but you know i'm like

you know there's a dotted line here you

you understand the implications of your

choice right

and then you educate right make them

aware of what

could potentially happen because you're

right i've seen owners do drop-in

replacement

not do anything and literally exactly

like you said for whatever reason the

alternator got in an over

the battery didn't like the what the

alternator was doing after a long cruise

you know generally it doesn't happen

after an hour or two

a long cruise and motoring you know

which does happen in our area of the

world you know sometimes people will

murder for 10 hours a day on a sailboat

to get to their next destination

the winds are already coming in the

wrong place or there's no wind at all

and uh then the whole boat goes dark

and that must be pretty actually i'm i'm

surprised that we haven't had mobile

fires uh in the early days of lift your

mind we had some fairly dramatic

fires um and i

i've been expecting as we get more and

more of these

drop-in batteries that we would see more

issues like this but um it's still at a

pretty low

incident level which is good it means

that

the bms's we've got are pretty effective

but what we don't know is how many of

those batteries have disconnected at

really inconvenient moments

yeah because you know what the fire we

know about because

it hits the headlines the disconnect at

an inconvenient moment we're not going

to know about

yeah i you know those are the ones where

the owner honestly

comes back and generally i mean most

boat owners again

you know they fall on their sword

literally they start off the sentence

like listen

you told me you know this is me

following my sword come back on board

you know i've given it back the battery

i've sold the battery

i want other batteries because again

they're not willing to go all

out you know it's easier when you do a

boat from scratch and sometimes we get

to do that

it's easier at the beginning you know

you design everything from scratch

you know there's less obstacles in your

way you make the place you need you size

everything up

everything from day one is done with

where you're gonna go

it's retrofitting um quickly

to lithium which is most often than not

disappointing i tell people

there's no quick and easy with lithium

you want quick and easy right

but yeah so and again coming back to

something i said earlier it's an energy

storage system it's not a battery

yeah it has to be seen as part of all of

the energy systems on the phone

and the mistake is to think of it as a

battery because it isn't yeah well it is

and it is

i mean especially now that you have a

computer on top

as you what have you tested lithium when

they get flooded it goes again jeff

sorry hey don't race

no he's at all i'm surprised i haven't

sneezed already it's june here

right yeah um have you

what happened have you seen a lithium

battery on a boat

uh be submerged underwater dude maybe

you know rogue wave or anything like

that or floating and you know

um of course if it's salt water you're

going to get a lot of um shorting

between the terminals

yeah because it's conductive if the

water gets in the case you know i'm not

sure

uh well you know with a lead acid

battery you you can get chlorine

from the electrolyte i'm actually not

sure what happens with lithium ion

yeah i don't i because with a sailboat

you know

it's it's more likely in a sailboat than

a powerboat

uh to have flooding in the boat yet the

boat that's still being

safe yeah and the boat is you know

there's nothing wrong with the boat and

once you get the water out

you know the boat is i i do know of one

or two instances where

water has got to the bms and the bms has

failed

uh and it hasn't shut the battery down

and and then we've had a cell go into

the thermal runaway and then it

propagates to other cells so then the

battery melts down

and then that you lose a vote at that

point well no the reason we know about

these is because

because they didn't lose the boat with

the battery melted down without losing

the boat but typically speaking you're

right

once the battery goes up you lose the

bomb yeah

interesting um yeah and i know uh one

company were pretty well known brand

they had two or three

of these uh battery failures where

water got into bms and then the

batteries went into

thermal runaway and the battery was able

to contain the thermal runaway because

they were pretty well built

well not without wrecking the battery

okay let's change gears a little bit i

want to

go into a little bit in your thoughts on

solar over the years

where do you see solar panels solar

array for voters oh

solar is you know it's the last decade

the uh efficiency of the the uh solid

crystal panels monocrystal

monocrystalline or polycrystalline has

gone up by 50

and the prices come down so you know 10

years ago

you might buy the amorphous the sheet

style

silicon because it was cheaper and and

the

differential in terms of efficiency was

not that great but now

the the uh amorphous has stayed more or

less the same

the monocrystalline the polycrystalline

has gone up and up

prices come down uh there's no reason to

buy that

um those cheap amorphous crystalline

amorphous panels anymore

uh and then within the the uh

crystalline world

we've got the sun power cells you know

have always been considered to be the

best in the market the maxion cells they

call them they're the ones that are

completely black

rich structure on them yeah that's how

you can tell they're the only ones like

that

and then recently we've had these cells

coming out of panasonic

they call them hit cells hit i can't

remember what the acronym is for

they're just as efficient as the maxion

cells in fact a little bit more

efficient

and and if you combine them with a grid

structure that's come out of a company

in california they call it the

mtat grid i don't know if you've seen

it's

instead of having a regular uh

bus bars which then connect from one

cell to the next

those cell connections are the weak link

in a lot of other arts they fracture

and then you know they've got these wavy

thin wavy copper grits that come

to an interconnection with hundreds of

little wavy

so they're like little springs so when

you get thermal expansion and

contraction or a little bit of flexing

or movement

it absorbs all of that and you combine

those

panasonic spells with that empty grid

structure and you've got a panel

that i think is is significantly better

than anything we've had on the market

before and they only became available

last year

and they're the sr plus panels from

salbian

yeah i think i've installed those on my

own boat

yeah and uh they're also they're made in

california

uh they put them on uh over the road

trucks where you know they're on the

roof

they're doing 70 miles an hour the

hurricane force winds

driving exactly yeah it's all on roads

so it's a pretty rugged environment

um so they're very well made uh i want

some of those on my boat

i've got some ten-year-old um kyocera

rigid panels oh yeah those were very

those were big

back then they were number one

yeah well you know i was getting uh

the peak efficiency in those days was

like 16

and uh now we've got 23 24

so now those are that um uh screen that

melissa just put up

that looks like the uh the one it tells

with the mtac grid because you can

actually see

in the picture of the grid structure but

if there's no grid in there then it's

going to be the um

the maxion cells from some power but i

think those are actually the

the uh panasonic hit cells so that

that's a terrific technology the problem

as you know jeff is we have no standards

for marine

solar panels if you put a solar panel on

your house it has to be tested to pretty

rigid

standards and it has to be labeled as

such

and it has to guarantee 80 something

percent of its output after 25 years

and so on the minute you take that panel

and put it on a boat

all of the guarantees and the warranty

is gone

and in the boat world you know we we

have a bunch of inferior

cells when they make these cells they

chop a slice of silicon up

and then they test every slice and the

super efficient ones go in one bin

and the not so efficient ones go in

another bin and the lousy ones go on a

third bin

they're still all you know sun power

cells

so somebody can go buy a bin full of the

lousy cells

and make a solar panel and call it a sun

power

maxim cell that's what it is it does

they don't tell you though it's a

fifteen percent efficiency on another 24

efficient cell right oh and we get a lot

of that in the boat world with these uh

cheaper panels

inferior cells poor construction no

warranty

that's worth talking about so it's

really important

in to pay a bit extra for a panel

from a recognized brand that has a

decent warranty

i tell that all the time you know

there's no way you know

it's funny we we've seen it all and you

know even on my own boat uh

my my my sailboat i put in the sun power

i think eight years ago when i met bruce

i was nine years ago

and uh you know honestly they're just

bulletproof

they're just bulletproof they're just

yeah so you buy a cheaper panel for half

the price

and you've got to replace it after two

years and you have to pay the

replacement costs along with the new

panel what have you sent

but you've got all that hassle yeah

yeah it's it's sad

but it happens you know and the

challenge is we're all we're all

inclined to save money as voters you

know

voting we're reminded all the time i

hear this all the time like oh it's not

an investment

i'm like neither is your vacation no

nobody goes on a vacation and says oh

yeah my roi i'm going to sell my

vacation after i've been to someone else

i'm like no no

it's an experience you know not all

things are measured in money

right certainly boating like a vacation

that you put money in

what you get out is not money out it

isn't an investment

it's an experience it's either you know

time by yourself some of my clients want

to just go out and they want to be

literally them versus the world on the

water you know and i mean i'm like kudos

there's other people that want to be

there with family and friends

uh you know and it's all part of that

journey

that you want is to have a reliable boat

experience but some of us

are forced to maybe make decisions we

don't want to or we hope to be true

and my wife keeps complaining because

i've got a uh

200 rv tv

which i i use as my cockpit repeater for

the navigation system

because you know you get a big screen

for two hundred dollars yeah

and as opposed to paying three thousand

dollars for a marine eyes

you know her repeater but unfortunately

you can't dim it properly at night

so it springs not the night vision so so

she's been

complaining for for years about that but

that thing is now

i think eight years old and it's still

working so it's it's proved to be pretty

rugged

that is pretty good you know eight years

out in the elements yeah that's very

good

what about wind turbines what's your

take on um because you cruise in the

caribbean here in the pacific northwest

with the massive trees that we have that

are you know 200 300

feet tall to the edge of the anchorage a

lot of the anchorages

are pretty low wind uh

in the pacific north because they're

also most of them are 360 almost

so you don't get it might be blowing 20

30 knots but in anchorage

you know that the wind doesn't drop um

to get you so what what's your thought

in the caribbean and for people are

cruising in terms of

uh wind generators well we've always had

one

and there are times when we've been

anchored behind a reef in the caribbean

with a 15 knot trade wind and it keeps

up with

the energy needs on the boat but those

are pretty rare

um so i don't when i'm doing my energy

calculations

i don't include the wind generator i

just see it as a bonus

uh for example when we were excuse me

again my nose is itching like crazy

[Music]

when we were um into makes you human

nigel makes you human

it's just a reminder for the rest of us

something has really stirred it up

um we're here we spent three summers on

the west coast of scotland

okay we had an average of a gale a week

we had almost no sun because the

weather's miserable in scotland the

cruising was wonderful

but even with all those gales because

we spent most of our time hiding from

gales and protected anchorages

our solar with very little sun still

outperformed the wind generator two to

one

wow we have 340 watts of solar and then

we have you know an air marine or

air x or whatever wind generator yeah

and the solar was still a better

investment way better investment than

wind generation

yeah we're the same so it to me it's

sort of

my order is do what you can with the

alternator

you know within reason go you know high

output

you know again if you've got uh v belt

up to a certain max

generally about 90 then it's like okay

if you can get dual v belt you can go

higher but then

doing the tension is a problem either

serpentine kit

high output alternator external

regulator that to me is sort of

a good sort of especially for sail

boaters i'm like at least when you're

running your engine make use of it

yeah and then the next step is solar can

i tell people solar you're not going to

regret it

yeah and then if that's not enough and

you have a place to you know

some people have these beautiful radar

arches and you know there's places where

they've got you know a sailboat rig

that they can put a a little wind uh

generator on one of their mast

then i say that's sort of then your

third step and after that then it's uh

some people do toe generators have you

done toe generators on your boat

uh no uh it's um

it's just the hassle of deploying them

and pulling back well of course now

you've got the flip down

type yeah like the walton sea

yeah that's right but for ocean passages

uh

they're pretty good but they're also as

you know very expensive uh

for coastal cruising uh you know but

if you're only out for an hour or two

and you're hoping from one anchorage to

another

it's a lot of money for not a whole lot

of energy so

uh we we haven't bothered plus you know

because i've got these super high

powered alternators and stuff i've been

testing for years we've actually never

had an energy issue

uh since we started doing this stuff

yeah uh with the with the solo the other

key issue is to put an individual

regulator on every panel

because we have all these shading issues

on boats

and uh it really maximizes the output of

the panels

i i remember doing that honestly

everything i don't know what it is

it's just i don't know if i must have

learned everything from you but

i remember i did that on my solar weight

six panels six controllers 450 watts

it was three one hundreds three 350

and the numbers that i was getting out

of that array 450 watt going into a 12

volt battery bank

and uh i have an instantaneous amp meter

telling me what the output is

because i'm a geek you know you got to

know this right you got to justify

you got to justify the purchase to

yourself and others and uh i've seen

outputs up to 30 amps coming up from a

450 water rate

in the pacific northwest so excited that

i take pictures

like i'm like literally it's sort of

like my version of like oh my god

look there's an elf take a picture i'm

like 30 amps unbelievable 25 sustained

then i start taking videos

i'm like look at that 25 sustained i'm

like that's more than

uh like the output of uh an alternator

without the engine running it's nice

the other aspect to this is if you've

got lead acid batteries which most

people still do

um it's going to maintain the batteries

in a higher average state of charge

that's going to greatly extend their

life expectancy and if it also

at the same time gets rid of the

salvation issues and and

stops you from having to run your engine

at anchor to do that final charge to get

rid of salvation

there's uh there's a huge benefit in

terms of cost savings in battery

replacement

big time big time big time and you know

we did a boat last summer where mind you

we didn't do the install the install was

done by the owner uh the owner

you know again anything's doable if

you're if you're geeky you know and you

want to do it right

anybody can self-teach themselves

anything i think i mean it's just a

question of putting the time in

this owner did the whole project himself

52-foot powerboat

ended up putting i don't know something

like

almost 20 solar panels i think it was 20

solar panels on top of a rigid

hardtop huge array i mean the array must

have been

2500 or i don't know 3 000 watts

and that owner could actually run a

52-foot powerboat

for the summer without ever running the

generator or running an alternator

like he was an off-grid home effectively

he could do washing machine uh dryer

like i'm talking running the boat like

the whole

boat without any sound

at all i mean that's that's just the

dream i mean that's

that's heaven right there yeah it's

amazing solar is not a gimmick but we're

big proponents of it here

i want to talk about another project

i've been involved with tell us

please please uh vote how to oh yeah

that was on my list

yeah that's about sharing knowledge tell

me about that yeah we've been

i've been working with a couple of uh

guys in germany

uh they got a hold of me uh one of them

is the

like the german nigel holder he's got a

bunch of books on

diesel engines and electrical systems

and so on and the other guy is a

phd computer whiz and a boater he's

living on his boat

and he runs an online um boat store

and uh so we've been putting together

this

electrical education series we've been

working on it for a year now

and we're about to go live with it

probably in

at the end of june though i say so

myself i think it's the most

comprehensive

electrical education marine electrical

education that's available

anywhere so we start really from basics

from electrons

from vaults and amps and watts and we

work our way up to a full

system design but we go via

installations and all of those

important issues like not putting the

stainless steel washer in the wrong

place

and making sure you do decent

terminations sizing the cables right

putting the heat shrink on so so we go

through all of the

the the bits and pieces and the nuts and

bolts of putting a system together

and then we end up basically looking at

how to

figure out your energy needs and and

size the battery bank and

decide whether you want lithium ion or

lead acid and what size alternator you

need and so we go through all of those

pieces and that's the

and then we actually show people how to

to develop a wiring diagram for their

boat which is something that a

awful lot of us don't have from the

manufacturer which we actually all need

and we've got some free software you can

use to do that create your own wiring

diagram

size the cables properly figure out

where to put fuses determine what sizes

they need to be

so it's pretty comprehensive from

education system

we're going to do basically online

seminars

on a subscriber basis i i you know i'm a

huge i mean over the years what i've

learned

is that and this on this very topic is

that

you know one must first learn before

they do right uh

and and there's nothing wrong with not

sure i think you have to learn and do at

the same time

yeah okay i guess you got to practice

you can read

yeah it's true yeah so you do it

there's something you just read that you

didn't realize the significance of it

no 100 percent yeah yeah it has to go

the two things have to go together yeah

i i normally you know there's some

voters out there that are gonna

not everyone's gonna tackle the install

all by themselves

but the flip side is you know the

knowledgeable voter

that knows what should be done can

really assess

quickly if the people that are on board

because maybe they don't have the time

or they don't feel that they know

exactly what they're doing

you know the education part is huge

because then you can start assessing

if the people around you uh that are

helping you out

are knowledgeable and then you can start

figuring out you know your own little

like you say your own little labs

and start doing but doing in the right

way because you

actually are applying knowledge that you

weren't as opposed to just

figuring it out as you go along without

any manuals

yeah yeah i also believe that if you

put enough effort into this you can do a

better job

than most marine electricians just

because of the

the lack of training opportunities that

we discussed at the beginning of this

um but on the other hand as we

say a couple of times in our

presentations if you're having trouble

following what we're saying take the

message

you shouldn't be doing this yourself you

don't get somebody that knows what

they're doing

because if this stuff is difficult and

you can't master it you should not be

working on your own bone

because you must like you just screw it

up and it's going to cost you a bunch of

money and frustration

so even uh you know even at that point

if you feel like

uh the lesson was kind of wasted it

hasn't been wasted because you've

learned a very important lesson which is

maybe you're not quite up to it yet you

need to work a bit harder before you do

something

and and you're right you know i tell

this all the time you know

it's it's a little bit you know

electrical is a perfection business

you know there's no i tell this to every

new employee that comes on the team

i don't you know doing 99 things right

and one thing wrong is one thing wrong

too many

it's you can't you know it's it's like

you can't

undersize a wire and not have the proper

fuse you do that

you could lose the bow you you just you

you have to strive for perfection

and if you're not going to give that

then you're taking on undue risk

if you're just hoping that things will

work out

and that's the challenge that we all

have to do not all you know it's like

being a carpenter you can have a table

and it's crooked

in the day it's just aesthetics you know

people are going to make you laugh

like like woodworking you know they're

going to say well this table is not as

pretty as it could be

but with electrical it's not just

aesthetics it's actually

safe you know functionality yeah that's

a big thing

a big thing um and i think a course like

this where i think it's really useful is

a lot of us like you say

aren't in these sort of voting meccas

you know where there's

deep knowledge like here in the pacific

northwest we're lucky

you know there's a lot of people i'm not

just talking to vancouver i'm talking

about all

puget sound seattle anacortes

bellingham port townsend i mean it's a

basin of voters and so there's a lot of

us that make a life

out of there you know some of my team

members 20 years yeah then you're gonna

you know regardless what you learn in

school or not if you're learning on the

job you're going to be pretty good

but there's a lot of places they don't

have those folks you know they're

they're a voter and there's not that

many people that are specialists

and i think that's where there's so much

to be learned

from uh these online courses like the

boat how to

i think you know whatever money you put

out you're gonna get

in target reaping rewards or financial

returns that's where

the x factor is going to be multiples

multiples

multiples by educating learning

and doing yeah big time classic

thing is uh we could all put less stuff

on our boats

we you know we've made this this uh

complicated when we didn't have to when

i first went

boating when you first went boating uh

we accepted that being on a boat was

just a form of camping out

so now we all want all the bells and

whistles

if we were willing to give up some of

those bells and whistles we'd make it a

whole lot easier for ourselves

nobody's willing to i'm not nobody else

is winning too

so then we have to figure out how to do

it right yeah that's right it's there's

those creature comforts like

refrigeration

is a big one i mean that's that's the

biggest one so

on the course what do you see sort of

the the

fundamental path for most people that

are voters and learning

on that course you know like tell us a

little bit about the journey there's a

lot of different modules tell us a

little bit about what does the journey

look like

on the course is it so if like

self-guided

how do you gauge your your you know oh

so uh progress uh

the subscribers all have access to it

unlimited access so you can do it at

your own pace

um we start as i say from basics

electrons

bolts and so a lot of people that stuff

will already be familiar they might want

to just skip that

but uh my recommendation is is actually

to work through it because the piece is

all built on each other

and then we work up to to installations

and making sure that all the bits and

pieces are done right the cables are

sized properly it's the right

cable the right terminals and so on and

then we we look at

batteries charging systems the nuts and

bolts that we've discussed

today and how these pieces all need to

fit together

to have a functioning system that meets

the bone owner's needs

because the other problem we've all got

is you buy a car it's one of a million

and the the car manufacturer knows what

the duty cycle is going to be for that

car

because basically they're all the same

you buy a boat

it's exactly the same as your neighbor's

boat in the marina but you use it

differently

so we all have to go through this

exercise

of figuring out how the way we use that

but what kind of loads it's going to put

on the

systems and the electrical system and

every single

boat even if it looks just like the boat

next to it is unique

i agree with that exercise which the

boat builder obviously couldn't do

unless we do that exercise and then

balance out the pieces

we're not going to have a boat that's

optimized for the way we use it

so then we walk everybody through that

exercise and hopefully and we've got a

really nice

planner where they can put all the loads

in and it'll tell them what size battery

bank they should have at which point

they're going to find

that they don't have enough batteries on

the boat and then we we tell them well

you know maybe if they're not willing to

pay for more batteries

or not willing to do this or that or the

other then you know

maybe these are going to be the

consequences and maybe you want to live

with that

but so we do we walk everybody through

that exercise until we get to a to a

fully

optimized boat and that's basically

journey

right what's that it's a journey that

that whole education

it's an exercise and it's not something

you can do in 20 minutes

no well i don't know how many hours of

videos we've got there but it's quite a

few

and then for everyone we've got it in

text as well because

um you know some people learn from

videos some learn from text

you can stop it at any point in time or

back it up go to the text read the text

so that whatever your learning

pace or style is hopefully we can

accommodate it

and then we're expecting a ton of

feedback

so we'll have a means of responding to

that because we're going to learn in the

process you know this is a learning

process for us as well

so we'll i'm we'll be fine-tuning this

thing for the next 10 years i expect

yeah it's the same thing you know like

that's one of the reasons why we do

youtube's is

you end up seeing the questions that

come out of you saying something

and the clarifications that are required

or the things that you said in a way

that

then convey the message either

intentionally or unintentionally

and you know as a teacher you you learn

so much if you're listening yeah you

know through the questions

the questions are

i thought we were done with the the load

planning exercise

so i was playing with some numbers in it

and

as you know but most of our listeners

will not there's two types of efficiency

when it comes to batteries and

electrical systems as there's coulombic

efficiency and amperes and there's

energy efficiency with waterhouse

so we've been trying to build in

some kind of formula to where we can

accommodate both of them because

actually it's more useful to think in

terms of energy efficiency than

than economic efficiency which is what

we've historically used in the boat yes

so and i discovered last night we've got

a floor in the planet

so yeah this has been quite a learning

exercise for me

so when we get off this cold today one

of the things i have to

do is go back into that thing and see if

i can figure out how to solve this

this floor in a way that doesn't

overcomplicate the whole system

yeah did you find i mean it's related i

think it goes back to same thing when

i'm preparing for presentations

um we learn so much from trying to

prepare

content oh yeah and i put i mean hours

and days and weeks into

i've got some electrical classes that i

i probably have

months of time actually invested and

every time i do it

i go home when i spend a day or two

revising it because of the questions or

the comments or the feedback

um yeah i mean it's a learning process

from both sides

and it's never going to stop no

that's the that's the beautiful part

about it

that's why i mean i personally go

through all the youtube questions it's

sometimes overwhelming but i'm like this

is where i see where the message

didn't resonate where i wasn't able to

articulate

an idea in a way that they were either

receptive

you know and not making it polarizing

too because i mean

unfortunately a lot of things in life

are polarized these days

and uh with photoelectrical you know

that's the one thing i try to keep is

like

there's no such thing as a perfect boat

there's no such thing as a perfect

system there's no such thing as

perfection

it's always these compromises and the

journey to get to the most healthy

compromise

for your boat like you say which is

important not every boat is

even identical bolts aren't the same

because we use them very differently

or most of us do um yeah it's um

so tell me a little bit about now

obviously writing the books doing this

course

what does it mean for you because i know

a little bit why i do it

but there's certainly a sense of

community when we're out voting right

like

voters in a marina boaters in anchorage

voters in general

seem to want to help one another it

seems to be that

the things that we got taught as kids

from our parents about the community

tell me a little bit about what you're

doing you know again through this boat

how to and your books and

what does it mean for you helping out

all these other voters because you've

made an impact

on here testify myself and on so many

others so

yeah tell me a little bit about that

well it is a community

and uh by and large it's a really

wonderful community

and there is a real um generous

spirit you almost never

meet a boater that especially when

you're out cruising

that you feel is really obnoxious yeah

um as i say i started on the book

journey and the technical journey

because i figured if i needed that

information somebody else needed it

so that was the starting point but then

what it's done over the years

is uh generate initially a pretty small

income but it's grown to where

i've been able to make a living of this

and the way i

look at it is it's a symbiotic

relationship i have the opportunity

to do the homework for my readers

and then they buy whatever i write maybe

a magazine i write for all my books

and enable me to continue to doing do it

so i've had a wonderful

life in which i basically pursued my

hobby for 40 years

and because of those people that buy

whatever i i produce

they've enabled that lifestyle and my in

return

i'm hoping that i've improved their

lifestyle and that we've got this

relationship that we can keep going

where both sides benefit from it

and yeah we're basically part of a

community where we're we're all pulling

together in the same direction

do you i mean uh just want to plug your

book by the way i just i have to say it

um for people out there the voters that

aren't

familiar with that book that book is

uh it's a bible it's been rated as such

i it could be it could literally that

whole book could be

a four-year university technical

course you call what you want every

single chapter is

gold i you know i've reread some

chapters 10 times i reread one of your

paragraphs nigel like

oh that that goes back to what you were

saying about you've got to do

to understand there's there's a certain

element in life where you can't just

observe you have to get it you know and

and i'm like oh that's what he meant in

that sentence

and you read that sense the first time

and you're like well okay sure yeah okay

yeah

you know you read again five years later

after living the the nightmare

you're like oh that's what it meant so

the book i think is also

i mean i have a copy at home and i have

a copy of my sailboat um

that if you anybody who wants to geek

out and generally people that geek out

or the ones that have had problems on

their boats and they want to

reduce those problems so voting is more

pleasurable

uh that book is also a great starting

point as well thank you

i actually i was just working on a piece

on corrosion

and i was reading my own book and i

thought you know this is pretty good how

the hell where did i get all this from

because i wrote much of that stuff with

some of it so

yeah years ago now that's amazing

uh the one two topics i want to talk

about just before we've got another few

we got a little bit of time

um can you tell me a little bit i get

this all the time from voters on youtube

uh about lightning protection we don't

have lightning strikes that often here

in the pacific northwest in my area it

happens but

honestly a lightning strike on the coast

is

not every day it's not every week it

could be

months you know literally months and

months without lightning

on the coast so we don't deal with the

consequences

but in the caribbean in florida and

places like that there are so tell us a

little bit about

you've got a whole chapter on that tell

us a little bit about lightning strikes

oh yeah

my brothers got hit on the hard

it vaporized the masthead vhf antenna

and it blew out every piece of

electronic equipment on the bone and the

alternator and they break the batteries

um and uh the actual repair pair bill i

mean he had insurance but the repair

bill was thirty thousand dollars

oh yeah on a 40-foot boat and he had

persistent problems for a long time

afterwards

with little things that would fail uh

you know months later and almost

certainly related to that strike that

got stressed out by it

so i mean the the theory is the same as

on our houses if you've got

some pointed metal object that's

sticking up higher than the boat

and you've got a direct path to ground

with a heavy copper cable

the ground being the water around the

boat um

you can at least contain um the strike

to where it's not going to blow a hole

in the boat or kill somebody

but that also presumes that all of the

the major metal objects on the boat are

tied into that

circuit and also grounded to the water

because uh what happens you get very

high induced voltages on

rigging and wiring in the boat and and i

mean

hundreds of thousands of votes were

talking and if you get

that and those devices are not all tied

together and grounded together

uh you'll get arcs from

one to the other and if a person is in

the path of that arc i

mean years ago i got some photographs of

somebody that was

caught in a park like that it didn't

kill them

but there were all these like little

blood spots all over the

his body where the lightning strike had

gone through and come out the other side

and destroyed his nervous system um this

was like two years later

he had to sit in a darkened room he

couldn't go out in the daylight

and you know nobody could figure out a

way to help him

get over this but so i mean that's a

pretty extreme case but

so the theory is so we have the the down

conductor

to an immersed metal plate of some sort

of keel or

a separate metal plate and then we have

all of these other metal messes on the

boat tied together with a bonding

conductor

we call this a bonding conductor and

that's also grounded to that metal plate

so if we get that strike and we get

those high induced voltages

they all get taken to ground when we

don't get these massive voltage

differences

within a foot or two within the boat it

will cause these a side arch

and now these drinks you're doing stays

and shrouds you're also

i mean yep these are all you know the

abyc

wants to see all large metal masses on

the boat

tied together anyway for safety

protection

with respect to an ac system and let's

say for example

we're at the dock we're operating an

angle grinder

and on a tank and the cable

drags across the corner of the tank

there's a sharp

edge and it cuts through there so now

the tank is life what's that tank

we can get electrocuted but if that tank

is grounded

you know it has a longing cable even

though it's not part of any electrical

circuit because it's grounded back

the fault current it's called will go

through that grounding cable and if it's

a dead shore

which it now is because we've actually

got that hard connection to the tank

it'll trip the breaker on the dark or in

the boat um

so uh so the aby c wants to see all

large metal masses on the boat

bonded and grounded one way or another

anyway not

for ac safety not for lightning

protection but by doing that we also

provide that bonding connection

that we want to keep everything tied

together for a lightning strike

and again if we put a lot of electronic

equipment on the boat we're going to get

some high

voltages through the system momentarily

it's probably going to

blow the electronics but we do have

surge protection devices you know

at home where we have those um strips

that we plug our computers into

the protection device

well we've got we can put those into the

ac system because

they're very widespread and they might

protect the

ac equipment there are similar devices

now for dc

circuits that we can wire into our

panels and for

individual bits of kit that may save the

equipment

but most of us don't do that on the dc

side especially

in which case uh in a direct strike uh

we won't lose the boat

nobody's going to get killed but we may

lose the electronics

yeah and that's why people talk about on

long passages having almost a little uh

bag in the oven yeah a faraday cage or

something you know

it's almost impossible in a direct hit

to protect the electronics on the boat

and the other way we we

if we're plugged in at the dockside and

there's a nearby strike

we can get voltage spikes coming down

the the ac wiring from the dock

with hundreds of thousands of volts and

they'll come onto the boat

through the shore power cord i've seen

that happen and they'll blow out all the

electronics on the boat

yeah we were we were involved uh

rewiring a 75-footer that sailboat that

hit one of these mega power lines

yeah in a river here and

it actually blew the boat up yeah they

didn't lose the boat

uh but what you talked about they were

cap i mean this is a 75 foot

high end i'm not going to name the map

and this is i mean this is

sort of the end state of perfect

i mean this is as close to perfect again

a swedish boat

pretty close to perfect um and literally

every single exactly we we were lucky i

mean although everything electrical had

to be replaced there is nothing salvaged

yeah um you know the panel had to be

completely redone

and the arcing was insane uh cabinets

like that

blown out the lightning protection

system

wouldn't have saved the boat you know

because you've got in a lightning strike

you've got a momentary massive

voltage and current spike but in that

case you're up against

the conductor and you've got probably

thousands of volts and thousands

uh on an extended basis yeah

it uh it was crazy literally like you

said there were literally

cabinets that literally were thrown

across the room

yep literally literally vape i'm talking

about how wooden cabinets just

thrown the other side of the room yep

doors

exploding through like off the hinges

like it was a life event

it was a life event and that's from

amazing it was fun

but that's from hitting the air you know

you get this

instantaneous um you know from all of

the electrical stuff that's that's

suddenly

melting down you get these very high

temperatures and the air expands

we had a when we were a few years back

we had a house up the road from us

uh in a lightning storm and the

lightning hit a tree next to the house

ran the ground because you could see it

blew the bark off the tree

you could see where it ran across the

ground it went into the basement in the

house

uh it heated the air in the house uh so

much so they blew the front door out of

the house

with a tremendous bang the door came out

with the frame

straight out of the house with a big

bang nobody got hurt

can you imagine our ancestors living

that like 500 years ago

a thousand years ago they're like okay

there's magic in the air

there's guaranteed you know what

happened you know the shamanism

starts right there you're like that's it

there's what's the explanation

god is angry who are we gonna sacrifice

oh 100

can you imagine i mean that would be a

life event let's take a few minutes

another big one too that we get and it's

related to this is this concept of

grounds

um you know especially bonding you know

for through house underwater through

walls i've read your work on this

uh inspired a lot i mean that's that's

my philosophy so

i'm definitely i i there's definitely

different sides of the coin um but you

know at the end of the day reading

through the rationale of different sides

but tell me a little bit about

your philosophy certainly it seems to

align with abyc

about grounds on boats specifically ac

ground

dc grounds chassis grounds um

and then even bonding grounds lightning

grounds rf grounds

you know a few minutes tell us a little

bit about your philosophy with grounds

well as you know one of the more common

corrosion problems comes with the shore

power cord

that's when you plug in the the

grounding wire the green one

uh is is connected to the boat next to

you and the one on the other side

and um and it's also connected through

your bonding system

on most of our boats to the underwater

hardware

and uh so then you've created a massive

effectively battery

so one piece of metal is going to get

eaten up to protect the others and if

if yours happens to be lower in the

galvanic series it's your boat is going

to protect

all the rest of them so so we have that

problem we solved that one with

galvanic isolators or isolation

transformers

so anybody with a short power circuit

that

regularly plugs in they should have a

galvanic isolator or an isolation

transformer

without question yeah we we recommend

especially for boats that uh are either

european coming to north america or

north america or going to europe

for the ones that don't want to change

everything over and the boat is mobile

you know because these chargers can take

from like 90 to 250 volt input

they can take 50 hertz 60 hertz i mean

the only thing you have to do is just

anywhere in the world you know we can

plug in in europe we can plug in the

states

uh single quarter inlet because the the

battery charger

doesn't care so we basically we have a

universal short power capability that's

right

yeah but of course if we had a ton of

air conditioning on the boat

um that battery charger would be maxed

out we'd meet them we'd need a much

bigger shore power cord

and maybe two or three battery chargers

but you can still do the same thing

yeah same thing in in the pacific

northwest the issue is running heaters

uh when you're connected to shore power

not everyone has diesel g and so then

you're running a bunch of heaters and

you're drawing 30 40

you know something 50 amps at 120 to run

heaters on a boat

you can't run that effectively through i

mean you could through a charger but now

you're getting

through problems of you're gonna need to

stack multiple chargers

uh because obviously the efficiency you

know to run you know a short

a charger to run 30 amps continuous

you know the inverter can handle it but

your battery bank generally is not going

to be able to handle that continuous for

24 hours a day

so then leaving that issue aside um

we've got on the boat we've got a bunch

of metal through holes on most of our

boats unless we've got maryland

um and if if they're a high-end bronze

silicon bronze or something like that

there really is no need

to time to a bonding system um

and particularly if it's a wooden boat

because if you

do that on a wooden boat and you over

protect

the system with a with a zinc or

aluminum anode

you can destroy the wood surrounding

protection and i've seen that

done and most of those older wooden

boats have high end bronze

through hulls anyway and they probably

have a bronze propeller shaft

and then they got a bronze propeller

there's no reason

to tie all of that a lot together to any

kind of a bonding system

um but in the event of a lightning

strike

you've now got all of these isolated

metal fittings and if you get a side

flash to one of them you can blow it out

of the boat and sink

so you know so there are there's pluses

and miners

to all of this but uh we on our first

book the ingrid

we had all our bronze through house we

had everything unbonded

and we owned that boat for 15 years and

the only corrosion we had was a very

small amount of corrosion around the

knot meter impeller because it's

generating a small electric current

and we've got a little bit of straight

current corrosion and a little bit of

corrosion

on the propeller shaft so you can always

go ahead and put a

zinc or an aluminum anode on the shaft

and protect it out

but for most boats and particularly if

it's a european-built boat in the last

decade or so

they've been using high-end brass for a

lot of through-hull fittings instead of

bronze

they need to be bonded and tied to a

sacrificial anode

i've seen boats in which you could kick

the through hull after two years and

they took off

and that because they were untied to the

bonding system using what's called

dzr brass um desyncification resistant

brass

for through holes instead of bronze and

it may be desyncification resistant but

it's not that resistant

um my own my brother's boat and two

years old there were

visible cracks in some of the

through-hole fittings

from the tailpipes because it's this dcr

brass

and it's not bronze and that that was

really widely used in europe it may

still be for all i know

um for for a decade because it's cheaper

than bronze

and the iso standard at the time and

again it may have changed i don't know

what it is now only required through

health to survive for five years

what was stupid you know that's

ridiculous yeah

five years i mean it's like a car i know

they could be in compliance with this

dcr bros

and so if they weren't bonded and tied

to an anode

then you could in location get some

fairly racket rapid um

galvanic corrosion and it doesn't you

can't see it on the external of these

devices because you're eating the zinc

out of the brass and what you end up

with

is a porous uh structure that if you

whack it

it'll smell and that's when you find out

so i i always tell people whether

if they have any question about the

quality of their through through-hole

fittings

next time they're out of the water whack

them pretty hard with a rubber mallet or

something

not with with a with a metal object but

they're supposed to be able to withstand

a 500 pound force in any direction wow

without damage but whack it hard and see

if you can break it

because if you can you need to know

yeah it's people are reluctant to do

that in case it breaks well

you know if it's going to break you need

to know yeah and

out of the water is the place you want

to find that out on the heart yeah

100 100 another uh

thing i see all the time particularly

with these european build boats

is um they do have a bonding circuit and

it is tied to a sacrificial anode

but they'll put a basically a form of

a a cable clamp or a

jubilee clip i'm having a senior moment

here

again thank you for being human i'm

thinking in terms of english terminology

and not american

uh which is bizarre since i've been in

the states for 30 years

um like a house clamp

yeah you'll see a glorified hose clamp

with the bonding wire

put into it all the time all the time

it's not doesn't make a good enough

electrical connection for a

bonding system that that's a bonding

wire needs to be

under some kind of a screw or bolt that

that's uh tapped into

the metal fitting to make a good

connection uh and the other thing you

need to make sure

is that if you've got daisy chain

devices so you've got bonnie

coming into one and going to the next

one it has to come off the same terminal

because if you have it on two different

terminals and you've got any uh galvanic

current it's actually going to go

through

the fitting and it's going to corrode it

so you actually

make the problem worse not better so you

need to have

something better than a hose clamp and

you need to have those wires come in and

out at the same point

yeah we avoid the daisy chain uh we do

you know

we do have and spoke with you know like

on my own boat

you know if we get sometimes we've got

owners that invite us to

solve a bonding issue generally it's

from pain

and uh we're you know because otherwise

we've seen islands you know you

you could literally lose and this

happens over time because bonding

systems are

just they're installed and never

maintained yeah and they we don't know

what they do

for most of us and so you go on a boat

even a 45-foot powerboat 50

you'll find tons of islands on that boat

you know there might be you know islands

everywhere you know it's like

these three through halls are together

these four over there

that's connected oh that one up front

got abandoned

and the boat is bonded but it's not even

bonded it's not even common anymore like

these islands are completely

standalone and on top of it they're not

even connected to zincs anymore

or any sort of anodes they're just

completely bonded without animals

yeah they're just making problems worse

and as you know if the boat is out of

the water

you should be able to take a multimeter

in his owns mode and put it on any two

bonded fittings and get less than an ohm

in resistance

that's a good one yeah that's good yeah

and if it's uh if it's anywhere close to

an ohm it should be well below an home

yeah there's an issue with the the

bonding system you've got

corrosion in the terminals or poor

connections or whatever

and it needs to be sorted out because

you're actually making problems worse

not better

how do you how have you solved this

issue i get this question sometimes and

i

again it's not that common so we don't

see it i like to but i'm thinking maybe

you've seen this

what about these boats that don't have

uh

sort of um you know obviously an

engine that goes through a shaft seal

that goes outside they're simply it's a

halt

you know at the end of the day it's a

hall and they're asking well how do i go

about

grounding even my dc negative

on that boat you know how do i not have

just a voltage differential between a

positive and negative post how do i go

about connecting my boat forget ac like

there's no shore power how do you go

about what have you done

or seen in the past with those sort of

applications

i i'm not well to get the care what

we're talking about here jeff

um but uh there should be a single point

on the boat

which is connected unless you've got an

isolated ground dc system

which is a little different that'll be a

metal boat but on most of our boats we

don't

um there should be a single point on the

boat but which the

dc negative is connected and any bonding

system is connected and any lightning

protection system is connected

and the ac grounding wire if we've got

one is connected so there's one point at

which all of these things come together

yeah the common ground and on a small

boat it might be uh

on the engine block actually where the

negative cable goes back to the

battery negative yeah that used to be

the way they did it years ago on a lot

of small boats

but typically now it's a separate bus

bar somewhere on the boat

where all these things come together

yeah that's how we do it sometimes the

only challenge you're right i mean

i'm still i'm even seeing the avyc sort

of schematic

in my head that's where all the

but you're right most builders basically

short circuit not short circuit but they

bypass the need for that common ground

point and use the dc

negative because it's the prevalent sort

of ground on the boat

they use that as the common ground

and then they'll start tying different

things to it like you're saying the

bonding they might tie in the rf

they might tie in the ac ground to that

and then obviously that is grounded

outside through you know

the engine block through the propeller

but you can't have that chaff coupler

you know that flexible shaft copper i've

seen that happen

yeah electrically uh um

that's okay as long as you don't have

you know more than four connections

but uh anytime you uh you're going to

have more than four connections

you've got to have some kind of a bus

bar big fan

yeah more before and then the other

thing uh what i'm thinking about with

bus bars now because we're using them

more and more

uh particularly where we've got a lot of

these high current circuits

um what i typically see is the the main

on the positive side now i'm talking so

we got a lot of current flow

uh not in there in the grounding system

but um

we typically see the battery feed coming

in at one end of the bus bar and then

we'll see all the loads coming off of it

a much better way to do this is to bring

the the battery feed into the middle of

the bus bar

and then loads spreading out so you're

dividing the current flow

through the bus bar in two directions

and that'll uh

reduce the voltage drop and the heat

issues and other issues

and then we want the the high current

devices

as close as we can on either side of

that connection point and then we'll go

out to the

lower and lower current devices and that

way we minimize the current flow through

the bus bar

um and it improves the system

i i you know i honestly it's the first

time i've heard that

we've i tried to alleviate that with

having because of the four posts we'll

do

maybe the battery connection and the

inverter and something huge again

on that single stud so it's not even

current carrying on the

terminal bar on the distribution bar and

then

but i like your idea of putting in the

middle i think that's a really

especially some of them are

uh from different companies or five

posts that would be really easy i think

bep does a five post uh

heavy duty distribution bar and that

would be a perfect

solution for that and if you're on a

post

you want the um the higher current

devices up against each other

to supply in there now and then the

smaller ones progressively so that

um we're minimizing the resistance but

you know if you've got

200 amps running through a circuit and

you've got even you know a tenth of an

ohm resistance you're going to get a lot

of heat

so those connections have to be

electrically perfect i have on on our

boat on one of our experiments

we had 150 amp circuit it would run

continuous

uh i got um one of those uh blue seas

fuses where they have

the fuse has got posts that hold it and

then there's a big bus bar on each end

and then the separate

connections for the tunnel yeah they're

really rugged heavy duty

so and i've got the cable coming into

there and you talk these

things down with a socket set you know

this is these are really tight

connections

uh and i'm still generating a ton of

heat to this connection

so i took it apart to take a look i had

a heat shrink on it i had the tiniest

little piece of heat trinket migrated

into the contact area

and even though 99 of the contact area

was still clear

that was cocking it enough with that 150

amp circuit

running continuous for it to get really

hot so

now so that brings me another

idea is that one of the most useful

tools we can have on our boats now is a

heat car

oh yeah the infrared camera you know

camera that plugs into your smartphone

for less than two hundred dollars

are you tired of the clear one whoa any

brand no there's a number of them

yeah those are amazing you can get a

heat gun for twenty dollars

so anytime we've got a high current

circuit on our boats

we should load it up you know discharge

the batteries crank the engine up

run the older navy flat out give it 10

minutes and then we could shoot every

connection on that circuit with a heat

gun and see if we've got any hot spots

yeah and that's where that camera is

even better because on a dc

panel or an ac panel because ac panels

they draw they're continue i mean some

owners are riding those line rate right

like i mean

they've got 50 amp coming in they're

going as close to humanly possible to 50

yeah and then they're they're going to

settle at 49 you know or something or

even 50

51 they'll try to load it as much as

possible and that's where those

connections on the ac

panel if there's a any sort of

lack of perfection there oh you know

those breakers end up melting they melt

the breakers beside them yep

it's uh the camera is just a brilliant

troubleshooting tool

i love it yep love it

absolutely i mean about these um

ac circuits uh i see more and more

burnt uh elements and short power inlets

you know outlets on the dock short

baronets on the boat um

the fittings on the shore power cord

because we are running these things

uh close to their rated maximum

and the slightest uh corrosion or

whatever at either end of that circuit

it's going to get really really hot and

it's going to melt down so

something we need to inspect on a really

regular basis

is the shore power cord and the

connections of both ends and if there's

any signs of burning

we need to replace it couldn't agree

more i tell people

like the first sign of corrosion on that

plug if it looks

tarnished in any shape if it looks like

oh

why is it not perfect i'm like time to

chop that thing off reinstall another

end or if you can't

buy another 50 you know 50 another cord

because the money that's where most of

the fires here in the pacific northwest

because of people running heaters to

maintain the boat temperature

because we know most of us don't take

our boats out of the water so you know

the water temp is around 10 degrees

celsius in the winter time

so we're keeping uh heaters on board and

if you're on board

while you might want to bring the

temperature to 20 and now you're you're

hammering the same seashore power cord

yeah big i mean that they even the

insurance companies were actually giving

discounts

on the premiums for people that would

install the smart plugs

where they're mounted in a slightly

angled side of a

cockpit yeah there is a point at which

water could get in and

pass the seals oh yeah well retrofit 2x2

yeah that was the fault you know

probably a year or two two three years

back so they probably corrected it but

there was an issue there with a certain

angle on with some of those

installations

yeah it's a terrific piece of kit yeah

the only one thing is that before they

wouldn't alarm on the alarm

and so people would literally lose their

shore power for appear

they lose their shore power they'd be

like what the hell it's at the dock

it comes back and it disappears because

the temperature sensor would actually

disconnect the circuit and reconnect it

over time as it would cool off

yeah and people were losing their mind

they're like how is my shore power cord

intermittently turning itself on and off

and at the beginning when we were new

with the smart plugs we're like you have

a smart plug yes

like oh my god your temperature sensor

is telling you

it's actually literally disconnecting

your circuit because you're overheating

so it's actually doing what you want

there you go and sure enough you would

look at the shore power plug and

uh there was an issue and that was where

the issue it was intermittently taking

it offline

we melted down the shore end of our

court in europe

during the highmar experiments because

we had a

massive battery bank for electric

propulsion and i had de-rated our

our battery charger to 80 of the this is

europe so it's a 16

amp 240 volt circuit so i de-rated the

the battery charger down to 12 amps

because i knew it would be running for

hours at a time um and stressing out the

short cord and i still melted down

the shore end uh the outlet and the plug

wow

that's a quarter so you were at 75

percent d rate

you were 25 degraded 75 percent of

continuous

and still melted down the yeah there

must have been just a tiny little bit of

resistance in

in the connection just enough to

generate heat and you know over three or

four five six seven hours

it got hot enough to melt down and

literally melt down the

outlet than the plug yeah that's why i'm

a big fan of those

if you've got a bigger boat and you've

got those glending at least one side

the both sides is not a connection point

you know like uh

you know every time you disconnect

something and you reconnect it and

people forget to do that

you know maybe again if you don't have a

smart plug that 15 maybe

20 degree slight turn most people just

plug it in

and they assume it's good and i've seen

that countless times where

i come up to the boat when i do a survey

the first thing i do is i touch the

electrical lava and i see if i can twist

if i can twist it then i know i'm like

okay this is

this is the first bat sign yeah you know

if they didn't know that they needed to

twist

what else are they not aware of right

yep yeah

yeah i have a photograph of a boat that

caught fire because of that

with the boat moving and uh it uh caused

an arcing fault

set the boat on fire and the boat set

the marina on fire

and uh the insurance company denied the

claim

because uh owner negligence because they

hadn't

twisted the ring yep

can you i mean that's that that's that's

waking up in the

in the third world country in a prison

one morning yeah

that's that that can't be good you're

like what brought me here right now

what did i possibly do to deserve to be

right here right now

that would be opening our insurance

policies

yeah yeah that's really expected to do

to do at least what what is required to

make these connections

yeah it's it's i mean that's the one

thing about voting you know it's not

easy you want easy i tell people

buy an all-inclusive you know go for a

week somewhere that's easy

voting is not easy it's a personal

everest for every one of us

you know it's uh that's why very few

people actually see it through

it's just a lot of people start but a

lot of people just never end up leaving

the dog

you know they leave the dock a little

bit and they go you know what it's too

much hassle having fun

yeah exactly i want to give you some

an opportunity if any closing uh

anything you want to say that you didn't

get a chance to

talk about today nigel i can't thank you

enough for being here with me today

this is honestly a highlight not my day

my week my month it's a highlight in a

long time coming on my side

yeah at some point you've got to cast

the lines off

even if you don't you got to do it

because at the end of the day that's how

we all learn

and there's only so much we can learn

with seminars and

and uh you'll see people sitting at the

top for years working on the boat

and they actually never end up using it

but at some point we just have to get up

and go

terry and i did it quite young we

decided we weren't going to wait till we

had the money to do it

i actually i've kept the family in

poverty for 25 years as we

went through a succession of evernote's

boats so

so we went and did it and had the

children on board as opposed to waiting

until we could afford it

but you get at some point you just gotta

go yeah

and then i tell people a boat is a toy

at the end of the day you know if we

screw it up

and as long as nobody gets hurt it's not

a catastrophe

um we maybe we wreck the toy but we're

still alive and healthy

and we can still get on with our lives

because people get really stressed out

when they make mistakes uh yeah we're

all gonna make mistakes

we've all done stupid things um we just

have to take them in stride

and uh not get too uh bend out and shape

over them just learn from them and keep

going

yeah wise words wise words from an

experienced cruiser

again nigel thank you so much for

joining us here today i can't tell you

how awesome this is

absolute privilege for you sharing all

those years of insight

and experience you have thanks so much

for uh

joining us thanks for all the viewers by

the way

uh nigel and i spoke about a lot of

things including uh the vote how to link

is going to be down below

so any of you that want to click on that

and see it for yourself please i

encourage you to do so

you can learn on your own or you can

leverage the experience of others

and this is basically you know there's a

shorter path there so

definitely encourage all of you to uh

not make all the mistakes

on your own also we're gonna be

different links of all the different

topics we talked about lithium

we talked about alternators high up and

alternators external regulators all

those products and links

for anyone that's curious and wants to

geek out are also going to be down below

please provide feedback questions i

can't wait to see what people have to

say about this video and this

conversation

and thanks everyone for watching i

really appreciate you joining us here

today

thank you

you