Boat Electrical Systems, First Steps - Episode 194 - Acorn to Arabella: Journey of a Wooden Boat

Gratitude to Bluetti for sending along this unit and solar panels for us to test in the shop. See details for the AC200 Max: https://bit.ly/3pr9XK0

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Prepare to nerd out about some of the specifics of our impending electrical system! Carolyn’s drawing, printed in an enlarged version, serves as Steve’s handy mapping tool for what will be the power system for the Arabella. Our two biggest power draws, as of now, will be the refrigerator, the watermaker, and any video-making equipment we have on board.

We’re testing out a complete, enclosed battery system for use on and off the boat. Steve (and all of us here, in fact) have relied on some kind of enclosed reliable power supply, some equipped with an inverter and some with attached solar panels, to have the adventures we’ve had on land and water. Since the get-go, Steve has been wondering if there’s something out there that could take the place of a pieced-together system of batteries, inverter, solar controller, solar panels, etc. powerful enough to take care of, say, guests’ phones, power tools at the bench, or even the entire house needs of Arabella. We started to test one that was made for off-grid self-reliance.

We’re going with conduit and bus bars in junction boxes for the tinned wire we’ll be running throughout Arabella for the 12V electrical system, and Steve gets to demonstrating what he’s gotten so far for equipment and what that will mean as far as the installation goes. As with everything else, we’re trying to make repairs easily done and future upgrades easy to install.

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Acorn to Arabella is a boat building project taking place in Granby, Massachusetts. Steve and Alix started as amateur boat builders building a 38′ wooden boat in Steve’s backyard: designer William Atkin’s Ingrid with a Stormy Petrel’s gaff rig. These videos follow the journey from tree felling, to lumber milling, to lofting, to the lead keel pour and beyond—sharing details of the woodworking, carpentry, metal smithing, tool building, and tool maintenance that wooden boats command. This ultimate DIY project will continue well past launch, when they will travel and learn to cruise aboard the boat that they’ve built. Just kidding about all that, this channel is about a Siberian Laika named Akiva.

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