This week was a highlight for our long journey, pushing Vanguard towards seaworthy. As the fog of chaos clears, the smaller or more subtle but no less important issues coalesce and find themselves on the to-do list. Assisting our progress were two excellent commissioning engineers from Praxis Automation; long days, but oh, what a difference. So, what was the net effect?
Tank Gauges - when "Full", means "FULL!"
Tank gauges. Range Anxiety is a term associated with Electric Vehicles in the USA, where distances between cities can be huge. A similar reaction has been our experience with tank gauges, an entire pain as they have proved unreliable, often inaccessible, and poorly fitted. However, companies do not survive by making unreliable transducers, so there must be another issue.
A concerted effort to improve electrical connections and replace two broken transducers, then refit the remaining ones correctly, did improve matters but was insufficient to remove that anxiety. We then discovered that an "empty" tank results in a failure signal that causes reversion to the last known level, often a full one if we have been transferring fuel. We also found an incompatibility between a 3-wire transducer and a 2-wire I/O board, resulting in an earth fault indication we could not remove. The workaround was to fit opto-isolators between the transducer and I/O boards and to reset "stuck" transducer signals by flipping their fuse. We now have working tank gauges after 12 months of struggle. Now, to check the calibrations!
Throttle controls and Dynamic Positioning (DP-0)
Throttle controls have been worked on previously to reduce an ahead/astern delay. We have also worked on our drive lines to improve alignment and the installation overall sufficient to guarantee ongoing reliability. With this improved reliability, we took that further and commissioned the DP (Dynamic Positioning) system. This is a commercial-grade system fitted to offshore oil vessels. Similar to the Dockmates of the world, the major difference is the method of operation, setting position, speed, and rotation parameters as the governing factors and allowing power to be adjusted to meet those. So, for example, if we wish to alter the heading at, say, 100 degrees/minute, the thruster will provide from 1 through 15kW depending on the current and wind acting on the hull form. We set this for electric and diesel propulsion options.
Vanguard docks like a long keel single screw yacht; it's tempting to use springs to bring her in from time to time. I'll write more details later, but we can now move (slowly) sideways against the dock stand on-station and rotate in circles or travel forward much more slowly than we could on a single diesel engine while idle. A great achievement without a stern thruster! The system is remarkable because it got a lot easier on the stress levels.
Power Batteries and Fast Charging
We have experienced issues with our large power batteries since their first commissioning. The major problem was internal discharge due to a single cell remaining at a voltage much lower than the average. Testing the electric drives allowed draining the batteries and forcing multiple charge cycles, 5%-100%. This was sufficient to bring the errant cell to average voltage, allowing the normal balancing circuits to do their intended job. During this work, we also increased the charge rate from our generators from 25 to 45kW while monitoring machinery and coolant temperatures. 80 amps at 600VDC is a lot of power and is unusual for a yacht system. Again, I'm pleased to say the system and skin-cooled glycol tank performed flawlessly. Charging is now beastly fast, much to the pleasure of my energy-hungry and silence-loving wife, Sebrina.
Pinhole in a weld causes an annoying slow leak
Now for a long-running battle. A single pinhole in an awkwardly positioned weld on one skeg has resulted in a continuous, very slow leak up past the ballast infill and into the engine room. A few liters a day, enough to make things look wet, and salt skimmed with the added joy of fish smell. We dug out the ballast and tried three times to seal it in the water but to no avail. It's not a structural issue but a blasted air inclusion. So this time, we hauled her out of the water, dried everything, cleaned everything, crack tested, drilled out the inclusion, and refilled it firstly with Devcon aluminum metal repair, then slow set epoxy fill internally, then replaced the ballast then backfilled the skeg with 2 gallons of slow set epoxy. It did get a little warm at that stage, so we kept an eye on it as it cured. Now we have dry bilges at last. Job done!
An assault on alarms finally results in silence
Our last foray this week was to rationalize, rename, suspend, and otherwise reduce the daily proliferation of alarms. Many were advisory and undeserving of the word "FAILURE" in their title. Some were irrelevant or relevant but removable with proper equipment calibration. The really scary one was the intermittent failure of one (but not both) ethernet ports, effectively warning the system had lost its redundancy. One cause was overheating from poor ventilation, and we solved that last year; the second was found by Praxis to be a loose power supply screw terminal buried in the back of the cabinet, sight unseen. Exactly the same error we have found multiple times elsewhere. Seeing a blank alarm screen at the beginning of each watch is a thing of sheer beauty to my seagoing eyes. We now
have such a thing repeatedly.
Wrap up
Our time now in Fort Lauderdale is near its end. Vanguard sits rocking on her moorings; she is a very different proposition from her first splash in the Antalya Free Zone, shockingly unfinished and abandoned. Like most men, I am adrift without a cause or a fight for focus. Over the last year, it has been a memorable experience working with the various technicians in Turkey, Spain, and most recently, the USA, plus teams that flew in from the UK, Netherlands, New Zealand, Russia, and Ukraine. Their skill, willingness, trust, and basic humanity have been a real joy to experience. Now we plan to head NORTH as the spring returns.
Lastly, I'd like to express my personal thanks to Praxis Automation, which stood by its promises, and our Captain, Valeriy Kydalov, for his friendship and support even in our darker moments.
