If you have any feedback on how we can make our new website better please do contact us and we would like to hear from you.		Now there's the charging system to sort out. I am considering the electrics now. I will need more sockets inside when I start on the woodwork part of the fitting out. I'm using 2.5mm arctic cable and ordinary household sockets for the power supply. I have also run the gas supply from gas locker to the galley. 03 april 10 I spent another couple of hours working on the alternator pulley. Its coming along! It started as a block 8" square. I cut 4 corners off with a grinder and covered my workshop in a fine layer of aluminium dust. Its taken about 4 hours to get to this on my little modelling lathe. Just got to cut some grooves around the outside now! I've asked for advice from the model engineers forum 'cos my little lathe is struggling (or, rather, I'm struggling to cut the grooves around the outside!) Sat 10/04/10 I spent the first really nice, warm sunny day this year down at the boat  today. I carried on running cable for the electrics. The 240 volt system is all in except for the inlet plug on the outside rear deck. I've now made up all the battery cables to link the battery banks and positioned a battery commoning panel just above them. There are two isolating switches for the house and engine banks too. The main 12 fuse box and control panel will be just above this 18th April  I finally finished the pulley today. I wanted it to be as large as possible and to fit over the original pulley. It took quite a few hours work on the lathe but It was interesting to do. I'm still not a very good machinist so its nice when something works out okay. Now I can make a mounting for my new alternator to be inline with this new pulley. The reason I wanted it as large as possible is to increase the speed of the rotation of the alternator to get as many Amps output as possible. I still have to make an oil bath chain-case for the water pump, so the pulley couldn't be any larger without impinging on that . I do have smaller cogs and chain that could be used for the water pump so if I find that there just isn't enough room, I  can use those. The water pump runs at half engine speed so as long as the cogs are the same size its the correct ratio. 17thJuly 2010 Its been a while since I updated this site. I did have to use the smaller cogs and chain in the end. The alternator pulley would have fouled against the water pump cog. I also made a small chainguard to cover the cogs and chain and act as an oil bath. It seems to work OK although you can hear a tinny noise as the chain slaps against the tin guard. I may have to tweak that a bit. I had a battery box made by Zeus Fabrications and fixed the engine start battery just above the leisure batteries. These are all in a row at the end of the engine room, low down under floor plates. I fitted the ceiling panels up and wired in all the LED lights. I have wired them as port and starboard lights all through the main cabin, with a couple of flourescents wired the same way in the engine room and two more LEDs in the back cabin. These last two are both wired in with port side lights. Each light is individually switched as well. I plan to have some very low wattage LEDs to turn on as night lights to illuminate a walkway through the boat at night. 4 of these tiny LEDs add up to 1 watt so they wouldn't have too much current drain. I have now wired in the 240v system with an input at either end of the boat. This is selectable in the engine room by a changeover switch and disconnects the input plug that is not in use. This is good because if I run my (noisy) diesel genny I can plug this straight into the input socket on the  front (or rear) deck and keep the doors shut, thereby preventing earache. It means I can have a saw table, planer, router or whatever all connected at once (Not all running at once though!) without tripping over loads of extension leads. I did try to use my bench planer on the shore line but we have so much voltage drop at my end of the moorings that the electro-magnetic switch kept tripping out. Pulling too many amps through I guess. It runs fine with the genny on though. The engine electrics seem to Ok.  I have a Smartguage battery monitoring system fitted now. This is a system that controls a battery twinning relay so that if the module detects a charge being applied to the battery banks, be it from shoreline fed charger, alternator, solar panel or wind turbine- it will link the starter batteries to the 'house' batteries. If no charge it detected- it disconnects the battery banks  from each other. This ensures that there will always be enough power in the engine start battery to start the engine. Today- I decided was the day when I would unload my excess ballast. No- not a crash diet!. I had about 1½ tons of surplus ballast on my boat. The gas locker had 2" of water swilling around in the bottom. When this ballast (in the form of 20Kg weights) was offered to me I wasn't sure how much I would need. Well it wasn't quite that much! So I decided that for my maiden voyage under my own power I would use the trip to unload this excess ballast. I had Julie, my partner, on board, panicking just slightly and American John on the front deck manning the ropes. We untied and shoved off. There was a bit of a breeze so I gave it some welly. Oh yes thats ok, away we go. Ok just slow down a little now --- oh- sh** - can't slow down. For some reason the speedwheel could be turned all the way in either direction to no effect! So I was just passing Uxbridge Boat Centre where I had planned to wind and all I could do was to keep going. I should add that I have never controlled a boat underway with separate speedwheel and gear change before today. So we went on to the next bridge 185 and turned just after there. It was a bit tricky  not being able to slow the engine, but by juducious use of reverse and for'ard and nosing into the bank, we made it. We then came back to Uxbridge Boat Centre and I tied up just in front of Alan Boswell's magnificent Dutch barge. My excess ballast will eventually end up in the bilges of this attractive vessel. I spent the next hour and a half walking back and forth with 40Kg at a time of ballast. I think my arms have stretched just a little today. After that it was a bit of an anticlimax to just cruise back to my mooring and tie up using my purpose made mooring ropes. (IE short springs with eyes spliced to suit the length required)  I am a bit concerned that the engine water temperature gauge didn't register any change whatsoever throughout the trip. I'll have to check the wiring out. After all that excitement -we went to Tesco's and then home for Fajitas and a glass of wine. August Bank Holiday 2010 Way hey! I have finally been for a proper cruise on my boat. I went, along with 3 other boats from my club, for a bar-b-que and an overnight stop at a site just beyond the Willowtree Marina on the Paddington Arm of GUSouth. We had  reasonable weather both ways and a really good evening banter. We will shortly be writing a Which type report on the respective merits of different bar-b-ques. More to follow on this trip but suffice to say my boat went quite well, the engine behaved itself and I found thats its no better or worse in reverse than any other boat!

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