Quick update: I joined USPS and had the free USCG Aux inspection, great lads I met doin' that they invited me to join the auxilary which seems pretty neat.
After digging into the cooling and fuel and electrical systems I just was really unsatisfied with current conditions and immediately grounded the fleet until further notice. Admiral is disappointed but appreciative that I take her safety as a priority.
Currently pulling out the old primary power cables as one had a fried terminal end at the battery selector, and the whole elec sys makes no sense to me yet. I want to fully understand what is hot when, because at this point I didn't feel comfortable doing any troubleshooting of the bad ground issue (strbrd eng no longer starts, just clicks) because even with the boat off shore power I was not sure what would actually disconnect all circuits. I have had to do A TON OF CLEANING in the engine bay, as my cleanliness standards are super high, so I have not even gotten around to checking the Racors or raw water strainer or anything. The yacht club taught us about leaking AC current and our boat had 100mA so I would have had to dig into the system anyway, and am researching isolators to find out what we need. What do you all think between galvanic isolator vs isolation transformer ok 40 foot trawler that plans to do Salish Sea this year and if all goes well inside passage and down west coast in coming years? I'm pulling a bunch of cables and things now so any kind of reconfig to the foundational architecture that needs to happen, might as well happen now while I have things pulled and opened up, right?
So I have been digging through the huge stack of docs that came with the boat, and it appears we have a "charger" as well as an "inverter/charger" so I don't understand why we would need both of those yet. One is the Newmar PT-25, I think it's about 20 years old? The inverter looks much newer and says Outback Power Systems VFX2812M (which apparently breaks down to a 12v 2800w ventilated/mobile unit. Can I get along without the Newmar, and have the Outback charge as well as invert? It says it can do 40Amps AC continuous output, the Newmar is only 25Amps and that's split over 3 banks.
The current batteries onboard are: a set of 4x 2017 flooded 6v GC batts which I think are 220Ah ea (correct me if I'm wrong but that has to equal 440Ah @12v then, yes?) as well as a 2017 12v marine deep cycle group 24 that was maybe at one point used to start the genset (but seller said he never used the genset due to it needing injector work, so it spent at least the last 6 years not used as starting batt for genset) and the mid bilge and highwater alarm were also wired to it. And 2x (year unknown) Deka Gel 8D "starting batteries" which also ran most of the 12v components , I will have to go out and put each on the charger and then take a voltage reading on them but I can't imagine any of the 5 from 2017 have much life left on them, but as long as they are working then I will use them this season while getting used to the boat and taking daily load needs into my notes. Is it common to run things like 12v outlets, the horn, bilge pumps, water pumps, etc off these starting batteries? My gut tells me that a dedicated starting battery for each engine with shorter cable runs would be a better option, and I will be living on it and running the engines a lot so I don't worry about the starting batteries just sitting in storage for many months at a time. For now I have 7 batteries to use however and I would really just like to have reliable starting with simple wiring, and then a separate house bank system that's just house batteries going through the inverter. I don't know how practical this is though because I haven't had time yet to think about all charging scenarios with 2 alternators and 30Amps of shore power and an 8kw genset and 510W of solar and 7 batteries of varying chemistries and voltages...
What's next?? I haven't left the dock since the date of purchase but I'm having a good time learning about all of these systems. Seattle is supposed to have an 80 degree weekend in 1 week. Can I have the engines started by then so we can bum around the river and bay a bit?!
Stay tuned for more adventures!