I Found Another PROBLEM (of course I did) 23

Added: 2026-05-08

[00:00:00]Everything on this boat runs on electricity and it worked great back in 2008. The way I see it, we have two options. We rip out every wire, conduit, circuit breaker, relay, and we start fresh. And we are rapidly approaching the day where that is the right choice.

[00:00:15]But today is not that day. Today is the day that we splice in a bit of 2026 into these 2008 wires and hope for the best.

[00:00:23]This boat had a fuel and water tank monitor from the factory, but a few years ago, the screen went out. I took that screen into a repair shop and they lost it. Since then, fluid levels have been based on listening for the water pump and using a stopwatch to guesstimate fuel burn. One of the most frustrating parts of living on a boat is storage space. You might think it's because there's not enough room to store parts and tools, but in this case, it's quite the opposite. I have spares in so many various totes, cupboards, bins, and closets that I spent the better part of the morning looking for the project critical bag of spring-loaded terminal blocks I need for the Victron tank monitor. If everything goes right, I should be able to see the fuel and water tank showing up here on this Serbo GX display. Right now, when it plugs in, it shows the monitor, but no tanks. If you're lucky enough to have an amazing partner like I do, you'll find all of the important documents you could ever need in an easy to grab folder. If you are also like me, then you'll proceed to open the same PDF on the laptop because F. With the pin out diagram, I was able to figure out which of these bundle of wires I need for the two water tanks.

[00:01:30]And then with a bit of sketchy alligator clipping, it worked. I'm now able to see that the front tank shows nearly full and the aft tank is completely empty.

[00:01:39]It's perfect. Crimp, heat shrink, zip tie, and done. Just like that, we now have info on the forward and aft water tanks and the main fuel tank. I did put a fuel level sensor in the auxiliary fuel tank when we installed it years ago, but I would need to fish the wires out, and I wasn't feeling that flexible.

[00:01:56]Besides, it's always good to save a project for later so you have the opportunity to be grateful for your wife's organizational skills. And then you get to relearn the wiring diagrams again.

[00:02:05]>> It worked.

[00:02:06]>> It worked. Look, status. Okay. Level 77%. Remaining 50 gallons.

[00:02:13]>> Yay.

[00:02:14]>> You did it. Good job.

[00:02:16]>> Thanks. At some point, I will plum in the after water tank so I can also fill it from the water maker, but that is not today. Today was just about making so the tanks show up on the screen, and they do. Getting this table out of the way is going to make this next project so much easier. At least that's what I told myself when I was taping wrenches together to access the inaccessible bolts inside the tabletop.

[00:02:43]A few years ago, I installed this new air conditioner, and it's been great.

[00:02:47]But today, it is getting a huge upgrade courtesy of Airlock.

[00:02:53]The air conditioner has a washable filter. But with two dogs on board, it's been fighting a losing battle against the fur, the dust, and general overall boat funk. This airlock 1 uses bipolar ionization to scrub the air before it hits the evaporator, cutting down on mold, bacteria, and the signature lived in the billagege aroma that likes to live on my clothes. It only draws a single watt of electricity and comes with fork connectors already terminated on the wire ends. My air conditioner has some spare male spade connectors sitting here, so I tapped into them, which happens to be on the water pump circuit.

[00:03:28]Conveniently, this also means the airlock one will only run when the pump is actually moving. That seems like a really good idea to me. We turn on AC one.

[00:03:41]There's two carbon fiber brushes, one emitting positive ions and the other negative. Naturally, I wanted to see what it feels like, and it's not much until I magneted the unit in place and my hand brushed both of them at the same time. This was not a good idea. That's tingly.

[00:04:01]And I'm sure the instructions say somewhere to turn off the power when mounting. And now we know why. First unit installed and tested. It was time for the second air conditioner, which serves both of the rear cabins.

[00:04:13]Optimistically, I thought I could do all of the wiring and mounting from inside the storage room, but of course not.

[00:04:26]Hey Jade, >> heat AC one and two.

[00:04:32]>> Off.

[00:04:35]>> Perfect. Thank you.

[00:04:37]All good. Thank you. Two wires later and we're up and running. The air immediately smelt and felt cleaner, which really makes me curious what's inside of this magic little box.

[00:04:50]Well played, Airlock. Your secrets remain sealed, but at least now we know the internals are properly waterproofed.

[00:04:57]Along with the pair of Airlock ones, they sent me this, the Airlock Voyage.

[00:05:01]It's basically the same as the One, except it has its own built-in fan and can run on AC or DC power. Perfect if you don't have air conditioning or in places where the air conditioned air doesn't reach, like bathrooms. Or if you're like me, I've had this voyage sitting in this back storage room long before I ended up installing the one.

[00:05:21]And despite this 10day old bag of trash sitting here, the room doesn't smell.

[00:05:26]I'll put a link in the description. Go get one for your boat, your RV, or around the house. Hey guys, Brett from the future here. I'm editing this video and I just wanted to share really quickly a little story about Airlock. I bought an Airlock 1 with my own money. I bought a second Airlock one because I liked the first one so much. Shortly thereafter, Airlock emailed me. they were interested in sponsoring and I said absolutely. They sent me the airlock voyage to try out and it's pretty cool.

[00:05:53]It is handy. I do move it around a lot from the back room to the either of the heads and it just kind of cleans the air just really really easily. But anyways, this is a long way to say that they are sponsoring this video and because of that there's going to be a link in the description that gives you a discount.

[00:06:08]It's going to give you $30 off if you spend over I think it's $199 on their site which is a pretty good discount really. What that also means is that they are going to give me a kickback.

[00:06:19]Basically, what I'm saying is if you are interested, if you think that you might like an airlock, pick one up. That helps you because your air is going to be cleaner. It's going to help you be healthier, happier, the air will smell better, you won't stink like boat as much, but then it also helps me, helps my channel, helps me continue to put out these videos, and encourages me to put out these videos. Thank you guys for supporting me, for supporting the companies that support me. Maybe with Airlock's help, we can all stink a little bit less. Now that I've limbered up from climbing into the port side lazarette, it's time to jump into the starboard side to try and install this ridiculously long USB extender. I may have overestimated the wire end by just a bit, maybe a lot of bit. That amazing Victron Serbo GX now shows the water and tank levels, but it only displayed two of the three solar controllers. That's because the third controller uses a different kind of plug and frustratingly a proprietary protocol to communicate.

[00:07:13]All that's to say the only viable way to make it all work was to purchase the Victron specific adapter which converts to USB.

[00:07:24]>> Tell me when >> you're going to pull a lot.

[00:07:26]>> Oh, okay.

[00:07:27]>> 50 ft.

[00:07:28]>> 50 ft. I did not know what I was siding up for when I said I'd help. Then with Jage assistance and wrestling wires behind the holding tank and through the various conduits, I was able to plug it into the USB port on the serbo.

[00:07:42]And thankfully, as simple as that, we now have three solar controllers talking to the servo. This should help the entire system stay in sync a lot better now, even on cloudy days like today.

[00:07:54]>> Oh, this place is like a carbon fiber one. You said it was empty.

[00:07:59]>> It's mostly empty. It might have some bolts in it. socket wrench, please.

[00:08:05]Nice.

[00:08:06]>> Think I got the size right?

[00:08:07]>> I think you got the extender right.

[00:08:11]>> I even guessed the right size. Awesome.

[00:08:14]>> How did you guess the right size?

[00:08:17]>> There's only like four bolt sizes on this whole building.

[00:08:18]>> A 10 mm.

[00:08:20]>> No.

[00:08:21]>> 17.

[00:08:26]>> Nice.

[00:08:27]>> Beautiful.

[00:08:28]>> One bolt.

[00:08:30]One bolt to rule them all.

[00:08:35]>> We have a really heavy table when we're done.

[00:08:38]>> Oh, this is going to be great for working.

[00:08:42]>> That is nice. This is our new table.

[00:08:46]Kind of >> sort of.

[00:08:48]>> We are trying to build a double-decker table. So, this will be a table and then we'll put wood here.

[00:08:59]stay there and build a box basically and then put the old table on top of that and then we can lift up the top table and all the computers and everything can live on the lower table. Bunk bed table.

[00:09:14]We're building a bunk bed table.

[00:09:15]>> A trundle.

[00:09:16]>> It's a bunk bunk table.

[00:09:18]>> Bunk.

[00:09:18]>> Bunkable.

[00:09:19]>> Bunkable.

[00:09:19]>> It's deunctable.

[00:09:20]>> Okay, I like it.

[00:09:24]Is >> the battery dying in the battery? Yeah, >> that's a great piece of wood. A >> little bit of sanding on the edge. Clean that up. It's a very dull saw. It's all rusty.

[00:09:45]>> It definitely does feel lighter, huh?

[00:09:47]>> Definitely.

[00:09:49]>> I think at this point it's easier to take it into than to hand it over. You know what I mean?

[00:09:54]>> I do. At this point, okay, here we go.

[00:09:59]>> Oh, that looks so good.

[00:10:01]>> I didn't notice this whole chunk missing right here.

[00:10:04]>> Put that side down.

[00:10:05]>> Okay, >> we can fill with the sawdust I just made.

[00:10:07]>> Perfect. Before I count, good lifting with your back. That's good.

[00:10:12]>> I lifted with my knees. Did I lift with my back?

[00:10:15]>> No, you did good.

[00:10:17]>> Like my knee is pinched right now, so surely it was activated. Okay, cool.

[00:10:23]>> That looks so good. That does look so good.

[00:10:27]All right, Jade, give us a demo.

[00:10:30]Good face.

[00:10:32]>> That was my thinking face. These will go up with it like that.

[00:10:38]And then we'll have a desk.

[00:10:41]>> Hi. Good boy. This is a tool that has been on this boat potentially since we bought it and I've never used it. A Craig jig pocket hole jig. We've been carrying it around the world. It's finally getting used. I'm glad I didn't throw it away. It almost got thrown away.

[00:10:59]>> That feels so fancy. It >> does long as things were were cons. Um, right. And a lot of the time >> the design of this table has taken quite the turn. It was going to be the box with the box inside the box and everything would be amazing. But once we got the box built and had the table on top of this table, it was so tall. It made the whole boat feel small and cramped. And so we have scrapped that idea for now. We have bolted the screen down. I 3D printed a mount for the uh what was it called? I don't know the desktop part of the computer and screwed it up underneath. And so this is it.

[00:11:48]This is what we're going to be running for the next little while until we get somewhere that we have a workshop because we need to be able to cut the wood down and my cutting skills are not good enough with a skill saw to uh make it look nice. So this is what it is.

[00:12:05]It's it is super secure. Like this is this is not going anywhere. That'll take a whole table down before it falls. But discovered another issue. This might seem related, but it's it's actually not. If you look here, solar charger, PV charger, but look at that. We have four and aft and outside. And we got a notification going on. Four after device disappeared. For some reason, I am missing one of the three solar chargers.

[00:12:36]It's unrelated. It has to be unrelated to the other one because it is wired. It It's on the CAN bus. It's not on the VE connect or D connect, whatever the other system is. And so it it it should it should have nothing to do with how I wire it in or how when I plugged it in the other one via USB.

[00:12:58]That doesn't seem like that big of issue cuz we're still getting 900 watts. Like, all right, that's fine. But if something really bad happened, we need more power.

[00:13:06]Look, I can't start the generator because for some reason now the generator won't start. And I check the voltage. We have voltage. We have 12.7 volts. So, the battery is fine. It's not even trying to charge. It's not trying to do anything. It's just dead. So, into the lazarette we go. Look at all this.

[00:13:24]All this sound deadening. It's all just falling apart, making a huge mess everywhere. Also, also 8 amp fuse is blown. Why is it blown? Well, right away see one wire that has just worn through that's shorting. Why don't I put a new fuse in it and we'll see what happens.

[00:13:47]Some of you might remember this has happened before a long time ago. How many years ago was that? This fuse was popping and I think it was basically the same thing was that these wire Okay. So, I put that fuse in. I didn't even get it all the way in. And I saw a spark pop.

[00:14:09]So, good job, fuse. Let's dig in a little further cuz there's obviously something else going on. So, it's not it's not that wire. So, it's definitely another wire. See anything in there that looks like it's shorting? Wow, guys. I have never felt these before while they're charging. These are boiling hot. I'm not even pushing them all the way to their limit. Like these are rated for 150 volts, 35 amps, and 70 amps. Not even close to that. I wonder if these are thermal throttling. Thermal throttled.

[00:14:42]They've got to be.

[00:14:44]I do have some little fans. I took off the plug and moved the wires out of the way. And I I'm able to see that there are some other wires in there that are chafing. You know, this whole thing just vibrates a lot and it's in a metal box and the wires rub up against each other.

[00:14:59]So, it's unfortunate and it's a bummer.

[00:15:00]Maybe some of this material getting in there. Like, look at this. This is what?

[00:15:04]Come on. Uh, you know, maybe some of that gets in there and it gets a little gritty and grinds away at the the insulation. Maybe. I don't know. Um, but regardless, I need to get uh looks like probably a 10 mm. Pull that box out so I can access it better and repair some of those wires.

[00:15:22]Wire there exposed. That one there that looks like it's worn through a little bit. You got this one here that's just kind of sticking out and then that white wire as well. So, we've got three wires that have worn through their insulation that any one of them potentially could be the problem. Let's Let's repair those three and we'll see what happens. Still all disconnected, but I want to see if something pops when I plug this in.

[00:15:49]Nothing popped. Let's see what I preheat.

[00:15:54]All right.

[00:15:57]really was just a wire. Okay. Uh I'm going to button this back up and we'll see if it actually starts.

[00:16:24]>> Hey.

[00:16:24]>> Hi. So, it's better if you just turn it on and let it stay on.

[00:16:28]>> Oh, >> what's up with it?

[00:16:30]>> I don't know. I fixed the one problem, but now it won't stay running.

[00:16:35]>> So, good and bad, progress. Kind of >> good and bad.

[00:16:38]>> Yeah, >> progress.

[00:16:39]>> Yeah.

[00:16:39]>> Here you go, babe.

[00:16:43]>> Are you filming for an engineering video?

[00:16:45]>> I was.

[00:16:46]>> Okay. Hey, engineering guys. Um, this kind of an engineering thing. I would just like you to listen.

[00:16:56]problem and potential solution that I'm facing right now is that the new carbon dinghy slaps. The real problem is that I've been getting migraines, but I can't fix that right away. Can't fix that today, but I can fix the slapping problem. So, one solution that we've had is to just put it on a super long line.

[00:17:16]However, we cannot do that in a busy anchorage. U because when the lines in the water were taking up too much space, people would run over the painter line.

[00:17:23]totally fine in an anchorage like this, but not a good long-term solution. So, Brett got us something very cool so that I stop going insane and like screaming at the air because I have finally hit my last straw with that slapping being the ingenious genius that he is.

[00:17:42]>> Ingenious or genius?

[00:17:44]>> Ingenious is like glorious.

[00:17:45]>> Ingenious is like the adverb of being a genius.

[00:17:50]>> Whereas genius is a noun.

[00:17:52]>> Mhm. Genius can also be a verb. Here's what he got. The suspense you guys must be feeling like, "No, Jade, shut up and go away." I agree. I wish everything in the world would shut up right now. Tada!

[00:18:04]New dog ramp. The dogs can get up right here, but it's also going to work as a docking platform. That's the idea. That looks so much bigger than the Amazon listing.

[00:18:15]>> Is it huge?

[00:18:15]>> No.

[00:18:16]>> Same size as the old one.

[00:18:17]>> Yeah, very very It must They must have used like AI photos or something. Dang AI sloph >> isn't exactly what we had seen online, but it is nice.

[00:18:29]>> Yeah, this is >> all serve purpose, just maybe not dual purpose. I think potentially what's going on is I think this generator might just be low on oil. So, I think what's happening is while the switch is depressed, the preheat switch, it bypasses a bunch of the safety switches and then when you when you let go of it, it then uses all the sensors for safety.

[00:18:49]So, for example, the oil pressure, and I think there's even an oil level switch.

[00:18:53]So, I'm going to try putting a little more oil. It's It's at the very bottom like of the fill mark. So, it does have oil and it's not out of oil, but it is low. So, that'd be great if that's all it is. And then we just noticed it's burning just a little bit of oil, which we knew. Anyway, >> one of the thoughts with buying this humongous dog ramp was that we would dock up the dinghy there so that we didn't have to worry about the dinghy hitting the back of the stern when we're loading and unloading. Hey, Penny.

[00:19:19]Dingo. This doesn't really work as planned, does it? Let's try it. Load up.

[00:19:28]One stone. One bird. The other bird got away. How's your hole?

[00:19:34]>> Oily now. little problem after a little problem. So, I added oil, went to start it, and preheat start it like one crank and then died. So, I think the battery is dead.

[00:19:48]So, >> I mean, he did start it a lot of time.

[00:19:51]>> Yeah, I started it like 20 times. So, it's not surprising that the battery is dead. I knew it was tired. Uh, and then it didn't run long enough to charge it back up. So, now I'm going to have to jump that battery.

[00:20:04]Okay, >> we got >> So, let's see if it starts.

[00:20:16]>> Interesting.

[00:20:18]>> And so, it's cool. She's part of the original Mesopotamian Pantheon. And if you look at the actual engravings, like the relief sculptures, they're really cool. I'll show them to you when you're done.

[00:20:27]>> Okay.

[00:20:30]This toggle switch is an emergency kill switch. And the top lug of it had worn loose. I was able to kind of bend it back in place to keep the generator from dying, but it's going to need replacing.

[00:20:42]So far so good. Generator's running and we've got power coming in.

[00:20:53]Generator's on, so might as well kick on the air conditioners because the generator puts out more power than the multipluses can charge. And so it's running. So it probably I don't know the fuel efficiency curve, but when I'm running the generator, I feel like I might as well use all of it. Because we have the air conditioner running, that means the air is getting dry and clean because we have the air locks now running on both of the air conditioners.

[00:21:18]So this boat will be feeling a lot better here soon. We're doing a deep clean, getting it clean and dry.

[00:21:27]And yeah, so far the generator's happy. And this is all really good because that next day there was no sun. So instead of basking in my three solar controller glory, I loaded up the Faraday bags with all the valuable computers and electronics just in case we get hit by lightning. Would it actually protect everything? Maybe, maybe not. I honestly hope I never find out. We are about to get hit by a storm.

[00:21:54]We have thunder all around us. Well, not all around us. We have thunder right there and lightning over here. It's actually quite nice.

[00:22:04]>> I have the small self correction.

[00:22:07]>> Well, it's a big difference. Sometimes we are surrounded by thunder lightning.

[00:22:10]>> No, it's true.

[00:22:10]>> Right now, we are not. It's all coming from one place. I think it might actually miss us. It was here and I thought it was coming towards us, but now it's here. So, it might just kind of follow land.

[00:22:22]>> One of our weather apps gave us a notification was like, "Hey, a storm's about to hit you." We're like, "That's new." Yeah.

[00:22:29]>> Never had one of those before.

[00:22:38]>> Wow. It's still going.

[00:22:50]Should have timed that. I thought, "Oh, no. I started the camera too late."

[00:22:53]Nope. You got most of it.

[00:23:01]Oh, I might have got that on video.

[00:23:04]>> But with that, I am calling this a moderate success. I'll see you next