Col_T

Excellent - prefer that answer most of all, so that's what I'll tell The Boss!

Thanks for info, chaps. I prefer the titchy leak idea, mainly because I paid a boatyard to flush-out the old (blue) anti-freeze/ coolant and replace with 5 year life-span (red) anti-freeze / coolant in 2018. I wouldn't have gone off that quickly, would it??

So, engine is a BETA BV1505, skin-tank cooled, and we did slightly more than 320 hours cruising last year with no engine problems what so ever. However, first cruise this year, nearly at the marina entrance and the over-heating warning buzzer sounded. I've now learned how to bleed the skin-tank, that the skin-tank connections are not ideally placed (both are on the top of the skin-tank) and that the highest-point in the engine-cooling circuit is in the skin-tank to engine return pipe, which is where the air-lock occurred. However, given that the engine was not run since mid-September last year, I don't understand what caused the air-lock to developer since then and the beginning of September this year. Any ideas?

So the 12.8v at 09:30 was with neither solar controller nor alternator charging. Also, this . . . was in response to . . . Finally, the BM1 was showing 1.9A at 14.5v when we moored to-day, after a 4 hour cruise.

FWIW - this morning their at 12.8v at 09:30. I'll check, and alter if required, the float voltage on the solar charge controller. Thanks for all contributions.

Yup, I had guessed that, so to-days little experiment is to isolate the panels so that I can see what the voltage really is when we rise. Isolating the panels is easily done, as we have an isolation switch between the panels and the solar controller.

Yup, even in winter🙂 The bit I didn't mention is that they are sealed lead acids, so no checking electrolyte levels on those, unfortunately, which is one reason why I'm 'curious' about damaging them. Lady wife is unimpressed, as she reckons I've gone from 'turn that off, we mustn't use too much electricity' to 'no, leave it on, we need to run down the batteries a bit' in a matter of minutes! It's a dogs life, eh!?

Excellent, cheers Tony.

We have 5 x 110Ah batteries, fitted late 2014; 300-ish wats of solar, fitted late 2018; a BM1 battery monitor, fitted middle-2020; use the boat mainly 3 or 4 weeks at a time; usually cruise 5 hours a day; boat left on hook-up, batteries trickle charging, when in a marina until we fitted the solar panels. The BM1 usually shows 12.9 or 13.0v when we retire, and 12.8 or 12.9 when we rise next morning, with outnight consumption about 25Ah - 12v fridge left on. Happy to concede the consumption may be a little iffy, as I don't recall if I connected both alternators to the bus-bar fitted when I installed the BM1, so the engine start battery may have an alternator connected. However, that shouldn't affect the voltage readings. My interpretation of the above is that the battery bank is, effectively, spending it's whole life at 100% + surface charge. Is this correct, and will it damage the batteries at all?

I understand the 'sense of security' thing fitting an Internet-connected external camera system, but what do you do if you do actually see someone trying to force entry? I can imagine that the crime would be gone before th police arrive?

I find that the quicker I go, the heavier the tiller feels, and have always thought this is because the flow of water over the rudder is greater. A short tiller would exacerbate that.

My lady wife tells me that is nice bit of quilting!

Genuine question - is there a set-up that uses solar panels to charge batteries and generate hot water on a wet, over-cast August day?

Purely out of curiosity, what would you suggest as "sensible size cables" - 25mm csa?

@Athy - you're a mod, any chance of moving this to a political folder, where it more properly belongs?