The national weather service issued a winter strom watch today for Tuesday and Wednesday. The greater Milwaukee area is expected to get
a little snow this week. Oh joy!
I can only speak for myself in this regard, but I've found that surviving the winter is much easier if you periodically buy project materials for your boat so you can day dream about installing in the spring. It's funny how big chores such as installing electrical components or refinishing wood seem really fun in December.
I have two major projects penciled in for the spring. The first and most difficult will be the bottom painting job. Since bottom paint and barrier coat has not gone on sale and won't until March or April, I'll have to hold off on buying the necessary material until then. The second major project I am going to undertake is installing a simple shore power system.
After doing some research on various boating forums, I came across one thread that was very helpful.
Here is the link. One of the members described in detail a system that would be more than adequate for my application as all I want to add are a couple outlets and a single bank on board battery charger.
The first thing I need is a shore power inlet. I bought a standard Marinco 30A 125V shore power inlet from Amazon.com. It's heavy duty white plastic with a stainless steel insert on the flip up cover. It should look quite nice. I haven't decided on a mounting location yet, but I am leaning towards the very back of the foot well in the cockpit. I don't want to be stepping over the shore power cord every second when we are in the slip!
The next item I purchased is a circuit breaker. In addition to offering my system protection, the breaker will also act as an on/off switch. The switch is made by Blue Sea Systems and is a double pole 30A main breaker. From the breaker, I'll connect a standard GFCI (ground-fault circuit-interrupter) outlet. This will act as secondary protection from shock as most GFCI outlets trip at 15A. Everything wired down from the first GFCI outlet will also be protected. I'm planning on installing 3 GFCI outlets. You can pick these up at any hardware store for about $10 a piece.
The final electrical component that will be wired into the system is a 6A on-board battery charger. I have not purchased this component yet, but I am going to go with a Cablea's Prosport II 6 charger. This is actually manufactured by Promariner and Cablea's just slaps their badge on it. Most of the reviews are favorable, so this should do the trick. Since I'll have shore power, I've decided to only run one deep cycle battery. I bought a deep cycle battery from Batteries Plus last winter and ran it parallel with the battery that came with the boat this past season. It has a capacity of 90 amp hours which is more than enough for my needs, especially if I'll be hooking it up to the charger after each use.
As if I didn't have enough power generation, I'm planning on keeping the solar charge system I fabricated this past season. Not to toot my own horn, but this was a terrific addition I thought of. I mounted a 15 watt solar panel on the stern pulpit and hooked it to a charge controller that ensured the batteries would not over charge or bleed off when the sun went down. Since last season I was dry sailing the boat, I had no electrical connection at the storage facility and no means of easily charging my batteries, short of pulling the batteries after every sail. The solar charger worked beautifully and I never had to pull the batteries to charge them - the entire season!
The last item I purchased for the shore power system is the all important shore power cord! The system is rendered useless without the shore power cord. Again, I found a great deal with free shipping on Amazon.com. It's a standard yellow 50', 30A cord. I was going to try and find a used one on Craigslist but with the deal I got, I'd rather have a new cord! What would I do without the Internet?
In the spirit of the season, I decided to finally have t-shirts made for the boat. They made fantastic Christmas gifts! I had the shirts done at Rick's T-Shirts Southside. Rick is an ornery guy, but he did great work and was on time with the order. His prices were also more reasonable than the other shops in town where I received quotes. Check, check, and check! Don't worry, Rick is not paying me to praise his business! I had the shirts done in royal blue (same color as the canvas on the boat) with white ink. Unfortunately I gave all of the shirts away, but if I get enough interest, I'll put in another order.
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