J/30 Class Association Forums J/30 Forum The Boat, Sails and Equipment Ananda's Refit

Thanks! I hadn't thought of laying down an AGM...I'll look up the specs on those. Might be the ticket!
:Doug

Yeah, I was quite happy to find them.

I also considered LiFePO4 batteries, but they're still a little too DIY for my taste. I don't really want to spend a lot of time troubleshooting my battery setup or figuring out the optimal way to hook up a charge controller.

Alex, do you need a charge controller to control charge from a solar or wind turbine setup? I guess I'm just curious about what it does and why it is important... (I'm updating my battery bank and currently do not have one).

I don't have solar or wind charging. "Charge controller" is a misleading term, what I should have said is "Battery Management System".

LiFePO4 (Lithium Iron Phosphate) is a new battery technology that offers much higher charge densities, over 2x that of conventional lead acid, AGM or gel batteries. A 200Ah LiFePO battery for example weighs about 55 lbs, compared to the ~120 of the Mastervolt. They can also be deep discharged down to 20% or so without any problems, and unlike lead batteries they provide a stable 12.8V continuously until discharged.

LFP batteries are much more stable than the LiCoO2 batteries used in cell phones, etc (you know, the ones that on rare occasion catch fire in people's pockets). The downside is that the danger of overcharging or over-draining is high, and thus they require a Battery Management System, a controller that regulates charging and equalizes charge between all of the individual cells that make up the battery, and also ensures the cells never drop below a critical level of charge beyond which they can be damaged.

At the moment, these BMSes are fairly DIY, and the batteries themselves are a little pricey as well.

It felt so good finally bringing Ananda back to her home in Pier 39:



My day began meeting my friend Bryan up at Pier 39, where we dropped off my two new AGM batteries. A short water taxi ride later (30 knots up the Richmond channel - whee!) and we were at KKMI. On getting the boat ready I found I had a dead house battery (putting out 10.5 volts). No worries - my setup allows me to manually disconnect the house battery, close the ACR and run the whole boat off the engine battery.

I ran the new engine up to 3,000 rpm and we motored out of Pt Richmond at a good clip. After clearing the channel, we set a double-reefed main and proceeded upwind at 5.5-6 knots, west to Angel Island before tacking and sailing south towards the city. A couple tacks later and we were pulling into Pier 39:



A few things still remain on the list, the most important of which is finalizing the boat's wiring. I'll have to redo some of it as the new batteries will be split between port and starboard, so my battery switches will have to be redone. Whee...

Are you distributing the batteries due to weight? I'd love to thank the genius who put my battery bank and diesel tank on my starboard side... we're always sitting just the slightest bit tipped to starboard on the mooring... I can't decide whether it is worth it to fill my water tank to balance it out and carry the extra weight or not

Weight and space - each battery is ~110 lbs.

I've tried to roughly balance the additions I've made to the boat, but I accept that it's never going to be perfect.

After a long day yesterday (okay, well, we showed up at the boat at 4 after margaritas at a nearby bar, but worked until 10!) and an early morning this morning, the new cushions are installed in the boat! Here are some pics, including some not-perfect panorama shots that try to capture the overall view a bit better.









Things are slowly coming together. Bins have been cleaned out and lifevests stowed under the main salon seats, tools are off the boat, the dinghy is back in its rightful place...

I stil have a ton of electrical work I want to do yet (not least of which is wiring in the new batteries) but that will have to wait until after our Vallejo trip on the 20th.

On the downside, the Isotherm holding plate refrigerator seems to have called it quits - while the compressor runs continuously the plate temperature doesn't drop at all. Probably a coolant leak. So one more item on the list of things to fix.

classy.