M/Y Iron Lady

Another area where we are making significant changes is in our communication gear. With the exception of dual VHF’s at the helm and a command mike on the flybridge, all of our comm gear is in the office. For a more detailed review, you can check out our prior posts on the subject by clicking here and here. For purposes of this post, we will just review things quickly and move on to the changes we are making.

The following are general shots of the office and the com gear.

At the top of the food chain (and most technologically sophisticated), is our Fleet Broadband 150 satellite system which works pretty much anywhere in the world. The unit includes a digital phone handset (visible beneath the Icom SSB) along with an Ethernet data connection that we plug directly in to the IMac in the office when we want to use it. It is not connected to the boat wireless network. Due to the data charges of USD 10 per megabyte we don’t use it often and maintain an air gap between it and the IMac so there are no billing surprises. Phone calls are another story. Calls home on the FB150 are down to around USD .85 per minute which is competitive with many cellular plans. Absent the availability of Skype over 3G or public WiFi or some extremely attractive rates by cell to the US, it is our go to system.

At the other end of the spectrum is our Icom SSB connected to a USB Pactor modem. The modem (which is located behind the panel) is in turn connected to the IMac. We subscribe to SailMail and use it for text emails, weather forecasts, grib files and weather faxes. While it is the oldest technology, it has never failed us and only entails a onetime annual cost of USD 250 for SailMail. The SailMail program has excellent utilities for choosing the best land based station to send to, requesting weather forecasts and grib files and weather faxes. It also remotely tunes the SSB to the chosen frequency. We wouldn’t be without it.

For WiFi, we have been using a Port Networks a,b,g signal booster attached to an external mast on the antenna. This is one of the items we will be changing.
We also have a cellular antenna which we tried to connect to an old Ericcson W35 unlocked modem this past year. Problem being that we were sold a modem by an unreputable source on Ebay and it wasn’t unlocked. Nothing you can do with a locked modem so it met its end in a trash bin – the seller had disappeared. We used 3G thumb modems but they were less than ideal. So changes here as well.

Finally, we are using an Apple Airport Extreme base station connected to the Port Networks bridge to create an on board network. While this has worked fine, it is being changed out and retasked as part of our changes.

The big change is the addition of a Peplink Max HD router – an expensive piece of gear but worth it in terms of its capabilities. It has two embedded cellular modem slots that accept sim cards from local providers. Just about every format and frequency is supported and each slot has an external port to connect to an antenna – in our case the one on the mast. It also has a USB port for thumb modems. Photo courtesy of Peplink.

For WAN interfaces, it has two 10/100 ports. It also has 1 802.11b,g, and n WiFi as WAN with provisions to accept an external antenna. It also functions as an 802.11 b,g, and n access point which will replace the Apple Airport to create our onboard network.
While we have no immediate plans to use them, the Peplink also has a 4 port 100/1000 Ethernet switch.

Among its many features is the capability to prioritize the order in which services are accessed. For example, use WiFi when it is available and then use 3G if it is not. If 3G is not available, then use the FB150 (although we aren’t going to connect the satellite to the Peplink at present for reasons stated earlier). It also has the capability to boost connection speeds by using multiple services at the same time – say WIFi supplemented by the 3G connection.

While we could plug our WiFi antenna directly in to the Peplink, we still like the idea of a boosted signal. To that end, we read about an inline signal booster that mounts to a standard antenna mount on one end and a marine WiFi antenna on the other – very compact. The device is called a Bullet injector and we purchased it from Island Time PC. We learned about it thru Active Captain. It can be powered by the same POE injector cable that worked on our Port Networks booster and will connect to one of the WAN ports on the Peplink. 802.11 a,b,g and n are supported – n was not supported on our Port Networks booster. To establish a link, he unit has a built in web interface that displays all WiFi stations within range. Photo courtesy of Island Time PC

As for the Apple Airport, we are thinking of retasking it as part of our Maretron system upgrades, but that is the subject for another post.

One of the things we hope to do this year with all this improved comm capability is to manage our finances from the boat. Until now, we have been using our accountant with help from our daughter collecting the mail. We are still working it all out and will do a separate post on our system once we have it all sorted.

As far as the new com system on the boat, we will report back on how well things worked once we have some time with it. The only certainty is that we will have lots of chances to get this right as the technology (and the amount of stuff we have) changes by the moment.

As you may know, for a variety of arcane reasons (too much to go in this post), Iron Lady is registered in the British Virgin Islands. At any rate, a whole cottage industry has grown up around foreign registrations in BVI – US Maritime Attorneys to represent me, Foreign Attorneys that are licensed to practice in BVI, Foreign Corporations, Annual fees to remain in good standing, and Foreign Radio Station Licences for all my electronics, including my EPIRB, that need to renewed annually – etc. etc.etc.

As part of my New Year duties, I need to “remind” folks that I need the renewed radio license. At the same time this year, I asked to update my EPIRB emergency contact info and also requested information on how to register a new PLB sized beacon that I intend to purchase for the dink. After several days of phone calls and emails to my maritime attorney here who talked to folks over in BVI it became apparent that my EPIRB, despite assurances to the contrary, had never been registered – VERY bad stuff.

Several more days of emails and phone calls later, I was finally given some totally incomprehensible and convoluted procedure to register my EPIRB. I suspect that the chances that it would actually get done at all (much less right) were somewhere between slim and none (and Slim had left town).

My next thought was to register directly at the SARSAT website – the folks who actually monitor the world via satellite for activated beacons. No joy – when I entered my beacon ID I was advised that it contained an invalid country code for direct registration as only certain countries permitted direct registration with SARSAT. Each beacon contains a unique hexadecimal code that identifies the beacon. This was the first time that I learned that the beacon code actually contains a unique 3 digit identifier that identifies its country of origin. Well I had purchased my beacon in the US – but how to verify that the country code in my beacon was a US code. A quick internet search revealed (thank God for the internet) an online utility that would return the country code for any beacon when the hexadecimal code of that beacon was entered. Sure enough – mine was a US code.

It then dawned on me that I might be able to register my beacon on the NOAA beacon registration website. Sure enough, it accepted my beacon code, asked me to establish a password and then opened a screen to add all the pertinent data – boat name, size, capacity, hull color, radio ID, MMSI number, communications equipment on board, registration data, owner contact and emergency contact information. Voila – it worked and didn’t even beef about the fact that Iron Lady was of foreign registry. The whole process took less then 10 minutes and I received a verification email confirming the registration and all my personal data within another few minutes. Very simple and straight forward.

It is obviously advisable to register your EPIRB in the same country as the boat is registered. I understand that some countries or beacon manufacturers will permit you (for a fee) to change the code on your beacon so you can purchase it in one country and register in another. I have been advised by Mike (FPB 64 Grey Wolf) that, unfortunately, the US is not one of the countries that permits reregistration to another country as he had tried. Someone has also mentioned that I will get a nasty “don’t do it again” letter from NOAA but it would seem (at least with a BVI registration and the problems I have had) that it might be best to live with a slap on the wrist rather than unknowingly having an unregistered beacon.

I would welcome any comments from others and their experiences as this is a subject of importance to all who venture off shore.

I talked a bit about minor mods in my last post so I thought I would cover one here.

Our Circa built dink has been wonderful from so many perspectives. We have had as many as 7 aboard – although I would not do that often. It planes with 5 aboard with a 30 HP 2 stroke Yamaha. For a better look at some details, here is a link from our blog. You can review it by clicking here .

We are making a number of mods to it as we speak. The primary one is to add sponsons. While I do not have a picture of them on our dink, you can access a picture of same on Setail.com by clicking here.

The sponsons add a number of important features. The first is that the dink will stay on plane at lower speeds. We have found with just two people aboard, the most natural speed is just on the bitter edge of planing – this will solve things. The second is that they will make boarding after diving or snorkeling easier.

We are also adding two flush mount rod holders on either side of the aft deck to enhance trolling for finny critters.

The final mod will be to install stops that will prevent the fuel tanks from sliding forward. This past year, we had the fuel tanks going walkabout in some violent sea states so this will keep them home where they belong.

Cheers

In my last post, I covered things that were issues during our NZ cruise in 2012. I thought it would be worthwhile to review the work we are having done prior to our departure form NZ this year. Sorry – no pictures as we are still in Pittsburgh, but I do have some pictures coming on some of the work from Todd Rickard who is heading down to NZ shortly. I also intend to break this in to several posts since some of the upgrades and the reasons behind them will take more space. So here goes.

The big one – installation of a Get Home drive. We are installing a separate engine, transmission, shaft and get home prop. This is not your typical, anemic get home drive. A four cylinder 100 HP Yanmar will propel the boat at around 8 knots. This was a significant modification that not only involved the engine et al but major modifications to the engine room as well. Much more on this to come.

Modifications to the genset. We have had raw water impeller failures that have ranged from as low as 100 hours to as much as 250 hours – still much below the 500 plus hours one would suspect. This was not a particular issue on our NZ circumnavigation as total genet time was under 77 hours in over 4 months of cruising. We suspect (and hope) that part of the issue is plumbing related. From the raw water manifold, the piping routes to the back and far side of the genset where it connects to the inlet pipe. From thence, it travels a horrible route (courtesy of Onan) up and over the back of the genset, down the side, under the engine and then up the front to the raw water pump. Said piping is almost all a one piece of bent stainless tube. Said stainless tube developed pinhole leaks during our circumnavigation and was impossible to remove without tearing the genset apart – a MAJOR ordeal – so we lived with it. Onan – when we bitched – advised that the “new”design did not have a one piece stainless tube. Nice that they told us after the fact. Our (and Circa’s) solution was to eliminate all of this a plumb directly front eh manful to the raw water pump which is close to the manifold. Other improvement will be to use “blue” run dry impellers. Will report back if that fixes things.

Communications – another big area that will deserve a separate post. Short info is that we are installing a far more capable 3G router and wifi system. More to come.

Boat Monitoring – We have been extremely impressed with the Maretron system. This year we are upgrading to N2K which allows us to design our own screens and project any information that is on the ethernet buss out over not just wifi but the internet – and that includes warning and turning on and off boat systems from anywhere in the world. VERY neat stuff.

4 Blade prop – Now that we are out of engine warranty, we rare upgrading to a 4 blade, higher pitch prop. While we may no longer be able to reach full (2300 RPM) at wide open throttle, we will increase boat speed at lower RPM’s – we are thinking around 10 knots at 1750 or so. John Deere wants to see full rated RPM at wide open throttle before certifying the engine for warranty purposes. We did that right on the mark. Problem is that we will almost NEVER run at wide open throttle so it is far better to set up the boat/engine/RPM for our most efficient cruising speed. That is 10 knots so that is what we are looking for. To avoid overloading the engine, we are installing an exhaust gas temperature monitor as part of the Maretron system.

There is a bunch of smaller stuff but I am running out of time so I will try to get back to it as well as posts that elaborate more on the things mentioned here.

Happy New Year and best wishes for an FPB in your Future.

Pete and Deb Rossin

I still have a few posts to do on NZ 2012, but by the time we reached Rangitoto and Auckland, we are a mere 8 hours or so from Whangarei and Circa where Iron Lady will spend her time until we return in 2013. So time for a review of issues during our 2012 adventure while circumnavigating NZ. As in my last year end review, this is unbiased reporting of issues we had and how they worked out.

I will start with the Kabola which provides hot water and heat to the boat when the big John Deere is not running. Last season the main circuit board blew out and we replaced it (courtesy of Circa getting a replacement to Fiji). Shortly into our 2012 cruise it blew out again. This time, a rigorous examination revealed some serious internal design errors. All of the power to fire the igniter and fan were routed thru a few small wire traces on the main circuit board for no reason as the power was simply passed thru to the fan and the igniter. The high amperage draw during initial firing burnt out the traces on the board over time. Deon from Circa was the hero and came up to the Bay of Islands with a fix that bypassed the errant circuits on the board and got us thru the trip. How bout that for a first class boat builder who comes to your rescue when a vendor screws up (more to come on that subject). A redesigned board from Kabola has now been installed.

We also had an at sea failure where our helm monitors kept shutting down. As we started to examine things, it became apparent that the inverter that powered them was shutting off due to an incoming over voltage condition. As we watched the 24 Volt bus, it was varying between 24 and 30 volts. The inverters were designed to turn off at around 30 volts so they were doing their job. What wasn’t doing its job was the Balmar voltage regulator on the 24 volt system. Once diagnosed, the fix was easy – replace it with the standard onboard spare (did the folks who sold you your boat supply you with one?)

We also experienced intermittent shutdowns on our basement freezer compressor. It was generally a simple matter to recycle things by turning the breaker off, waiting for about an hour, turning the breaker back on and we were back in business. There was still some risk for defrosting if we did not catch the shutdown so as we emptied the upper freezer, we moved items from the basement freezer to the upper freezer. Once empty, we simply turned off the basement freezer for the latter half of the trip. We now think that an internal parameter that monitors buss voltage may have been set incorrectly causing the shutdowns based on what it perceived to be a low voltage. While Iron lady sits on the hard at Circa, we are running the freezer to be sure.

Perhaps the biggest issue we had was with the new Comnav autopilot which was installed to replace one of the WH pilots. As you may recall, we had significant issues with the primary WH autopilot last year so the decision was made to replace it with a new Comnav system while Iron lady was back at Circa. This also required that we replace the WH pump set with a pump approved by Comnav. We had almost completed our circumnavigation of the North Island when the new pump on the Comnav pilot failed. To make a long story short, we diagnosed that the shaft between the motor and the pump had failed. As we had the back up WH pilot and the emergency steering wheel, this was not a major impediment to continuing our cruise, but Circa arranged for a replacement pump to be sent to meet us in Picton and have a mechanic they knew go thru things and install the new pump. In the process we discovered that the Comnav pump required a larger bleed line them the one the WH pump had. As such, the pump was being starved for make up fluid and that caused excessive loading which sheared the shaft. A temporary, pressurized makeup line was installed to solve the problem and the installation was tidied up by Circa after completion of our cruise.

That’s the list. Not bad based on all of my other experiences with “Holes in the Water” and, once again, you can see how Circa’s customer support really made the difference.

Next time around, I will try to cover mods we are making to Iron Lady before heading off next year.