A name and a fish

I've finally painted a name on my boat. And I have been able to get a picture of the whole boat, now that it's in its new berth.










Before Christmas we noticed a large fish was sleeping (do fish sleep? - well it was stationary, but not dead) in a shallow edge of the marina with its back and dorsal fin actually out of the water. The fish is a good 500mm long with a large girth. Someone said it is a mirror carp.

Interestingly it is back again, and this morning there was another fish alongside it. The other fish was not quite so long and was very slender with a long snout. I wonder if it was a young pike. Just after I got my first photograph it suddenly disappeared in a cloud of mud.

I find it difficult to get a good photo through the glare of the water surface, even though they seem easy to see with the naked eye. These pictures have been tinkered with using PaintShopPro to make the fish as visible as possible.

New view

I have moved to a new berth which is a longer walk from the marina facilities but has a wonderful view.

And I have officially changed the boat name to Leopard. The next problem is to put the name on it. Thankfully the old name (Arkansas) was not on it and does not have to be removed.

Electricity

I have just finished installing my Sterling Alternator to Battery Charger and my Sterling Power Management Panel.

The Alternator to Battery charger (A2B) is a clever device that tricks the alternator into producing more output in order to charge the batteries faster. It does this without any modifications to the alternator. And you can connect two alternators to it provided their total output is less than the max for the A2B.

The Power Management Panel (PMP) is a device that measures voltage and current and can calculate the number of amp-hours drawn from your battery. (These are pics from Sterling's website - the PMP is much smaller than the A2B).



A few months ago I installed a Sterling pure sine wave inverter-charger to keep my batteries topped up while I am connected to the marina shower power. The inverter-charger works very effectively as an uninterruptible power supply as it automatically starts generating 230v ac from the batteries if the shore power fails. I proved that it works by accidentally overloading the shore power which then tripped off. However I did not notice until the inverter started beeping because it was overloaded. The 2.5kW inverter continued providing over 3kW until I switched off one of my electric appliances. I presume it would eventually have shut down.

The purpose of all this electrical equipment is so I can enjoy 230v ac when I am not attached to shore power. To test my new installation I switched off the shore-power and turned on a fan heater. With the boat engine running it was comfortably able to provide 1kW and spare amps to continue charging the battery. As 1kW is 83 amps at 12v (and more when you allow for inverter inefficiency) it was clear that both 70 amp alternators were contributing. When I turned the heater up to 2kW the alternators could not cope and there was about 75 amp drawn from the batteries. However at that rate I should have enough battery capacity for about 2 hours usage, and I can't imagine wanting as much as 2kW for more than a few minutes a any time. (Needless to say I have no intention of driving the fan heater from the inverter - it was just used for test purposes.)

My main 230v demand will be a microwave, fridge and washing machine. I bought a regular 230v fridge/freezer rather than pay the exorbitant price for a 12v fridge.

I have installed the A2B so that I can re-wire the system back to its original state easily. I must write down how to do it while I still remember!

I also installed the inverter charger so that I can connect the shore power through the inverter-charger (the normal day-to-day situation) but I can also connect the shore power straight into the domestic 230v circuit.

I intend to put some sort of indicator in the saloon/kitchen area so I can easily see whether the shore power is working - so that I don't inadvertently use battery power.

It's in the back of my mind to have a mains socket in the boat that draws directly from the shore-power and never from the inverter. It would be useful, for example, to avoid accidentally heating water with battery power.

IKEA Ugh!

I visited IKEA in Coventry yesterday. I had never been to an IKEA store so I just went along to see if the hype is justified. All went fine while I toured the 6th (showroom) floor. After doing the full circuit back to the lifts I assumed I had seen all there was to see, but there seemed to be no exit. I asked one of the staff who said I had to go down to the next level. The stairs was nearby so off I went, only to discover lots more stuff on floor 5. However I quickly got tired of looking at stuff but I couldn't see any obvious exit. I followed the arrows on the floor for a bit, getting quite angry at this waste of time. Another member of staff pointed me through doors (by-passing some of the shop) to the top of a long 4 section escalator which just brought me to another floor. But at least there was now a lift nearby. After the usual delay the lift arrived - but it only went UP. I was really furious at this stage and had to ask a third person how to get to the exit. I told her I wouldn't be back just because it is so difficult to leave. I think it took about 15 minutes for me to calm down.

Evolution

I'm re-reading "The Ancestor's Tale" by Richard Dawkins. I have a very poor sense of the passage of time - for example did I do something last week or three weeks ago? Nevertheless it is mind-boggling to try to think about something that happened 18 million years ago (when humans and gibbons shared a common ancestor). And this is only a short distance into the book. It's a long book so I'm not sure if I will read it through completely for a second time.








Prior to this I re-read "The Selfish Gene". It seemed appropriate as this is the bi-centenary of Charles Darwin's birth. The selfish gene is a must-read for everyone so that we appreciate our place in the world.

Drawing and planning

I've spent a lot of time searching for suitable software to create dimensioned drawings. All of the CAD programs that I tried were too complex. For the amount of use I would get from them it would not have been worthwhile putting in the effort to learn how to use them. For years I have used Powerpoint to create simple diagrams. I know how to use it and it is easy to make complex shapes by combining simple squares and circles. And, unlike any of the paint programs, I can go back and change shapes at a later stage, and move things around.

More recently I have been using OpenOffice which is a free equivalent of Microsoft Office and which works with Windows and Linux. As well as having the equivalent of Powerpoint it comes with a Drawing program which works very similarly to Powerpoint (with squares, circles etc) but also allows you to set the scale of drawings, to add dimension lines and to have different layers. This is an example of the layout of my saloon.

This is only a 2-dimensional drawing product, but it's so easy to use. I have used it to do some detailed drawings that show the construction of pieces of woodwork allowing for the thickness of the material. I particularly like the fact that it works with squares or rectangles that represent solid pieces that you can move to different locations.

And, of course, it is free! You can usually find a copy of OpenOffice on the free CDs that come with computer magazines.

Tools, Moble Homes etc.

Last Sunday, 22nd February, I went to the National Boat Caravan and Outdoor Show at the National Exhibition Centre Birmingham. I drove to Rugby and got the train to Birmingham International station. The station is a short indoor walk away from the NEC and the cost of the train £6.40 and parking at Rugby £6.00 was about the same as I would have spent on petrol to drive all the way.

One hall was filled with motor caravans. Its amazing how they can pack them in so closely, but they have no interest for me.

The interesting stuff was on the small stands located around the walls. There were two stands demonstrating Fein tools. My Fein Multimaster does things that are just impossible otherwise - especially cutting access holes in awkward places without taking everything apart. The one in the picture has a sander attached. But the saws, like the one on the left, are really cool. Apart from some food the only thing I bought at the show was a new blade - like the one on the left!

There were a few narrowboats on show as well as a couple of widebeam boats. When you think of the size of narrowboats "a few" take up a lot of space. I was interested to see how the woodwork details were done, such as edges of panels, doors and shelves. Much of it is quite simple but carefully and evenly executed.

The other thing I wanted to look at was mobile homes. Somewhere in the back of my mind is the idea of buying one as a fixed base. However as I think about it now, the rationale may be less clear cut from my new base on a narrowboat as compared with when I was living on "Orange". I deliberately went in search of the cheapest one and I was amazed at what you get for £18,000. Ok this was a two bedroom version and a third bedroom would be a useful study or workshop for an extra £1,000. Why do people spend huge amounts on regular houses? Yes I know that the price of a house includes the site, and you would expect a house to last longer. But even if you bought a site I suspect you would still have money for a few mobile homes. And why are we paying now for benefits for future generations?

It’s interesting how mobile home parks at holiday resorts are solid well kept middle class enclaves. Whereas if I developed a field in, say, Maynooth as a mobile home park for affordable homes the general assumption is that it would become a dirty unkempt ghetto for the poor. Perhaps most of the attraction of expensive houses is the price rather than the accommodation, because the price excludes poor people. (Poor being universally defined as everyone who can afford less than me!)

There was a wonderful array of men demonstrating miracle products at the show. I have to confess to being impressed with a steam floor cleaner that seemed to clean with very little water. One has to remind oneself that it might just have been cleaning the things it is good at cleaning. There was another demonstration of a brush with rubber bristles that seemed miraculously to sweep hair and broken cornflakes out of a carpet. Another man was demonstrating cobalt tipped drills (or at least the good one he had in his drill) that had a lifetime guarantee. He was selling a box of assorted sizes for £40. I suspect I will have plenty of use for good drills, but £40 seemed too much of a gamble. I could see no sign of the manufacturers name or even a "respectable looking" business name that might lead you to think the guarantee would be honoured in 5 months time, never mind 5 years. On the other hand we all put our blind faith in the pin stripe suited and expensively logoed banks ...