How good does that feel. We’re back on the boat. Olly has done an amazing job, and Lindsay and Stevie…., everything is back together (nearly) and the boat is ready for us to come back aboard.  Now we start to see some of the benefit of the work we have done.  The navigation will have to wait for our first trip out of the season in a few weeks but the electrical system is ready to go.

One thing we learn straight away is that the electrical changes have transformed our way of life,  in the past, we have been heavily restricted by the capacity of the shore power.  This is at 16A which isn’t bad for a marina but is 4kW of available power. A decent electrical fire is at least two kW. Put a kettle on, with background power usage, and suddenly you are taking a walk down the pontoon to reset the power or, if you are lucky, you are resetting a trip on the electrical board.

All these issues are a thing of the past, we have a 5kw invert charger which can provide 20A of power when we need it.  This is taken from the batteries, so it isn’t long term, but can take care of short term peaks.  What it does mean that you can run an aircon unit, maybe a couple of fires, hair straighteners, hair dryer, fancy a cup of tea – no problem. 🙂

After this, the charger part of the victron takes over and puts power back into the battery.

We are loving the new system and it makes living the boat on the pontoon less constrained.