My New Yacht Has One Last Problem

Added: 2026-05-30

[00:00:00]Before I officially take possession of my new yacht, we've got one last mystery to solve. There's a strange noise coming from the electric drive system, and today we're going back out to track it down.

[00:00:24]All right, we are taking the boat out on a third sea trial. Didn't film the second one. Wasn't very long. We're just calibrating some compass. We had originally tried to salvage the autopilot off hole number one. So, they brought it back and it just wasn't working. So, um had to get another autopilot. They've installed that and now we are yeah getting ready to go here on another sea trial. All right, let me kind of go over what I've done on the boat so far. Uh this is my new E foil.

[00:00:52]It uh got it all put together. Haven't tried it out yet. I don't like the marina water's nasty. I'm not going to get in that water. So once we get on our first anchorage, I'll take that out for a little test spin. All right. In here in the main salon, uh we've got the kitchen pretty much stocked. All the pots and pans, plates, cups, all that stuff is put away and stored. Still have a lot of pantry type stuff to do. That's kind of the one drawback on this boat.

[00:01:14]There's not a lot of pantry space. There is right over here. You can use this as pantry space if you want. Uh we just got stored extra stuff in there. But what I'm going to do is I'm going to get some baskets and some bins. And I'm going to put make my pantry kind of up here cuz there's so much space here. And then you can store more stuff over here. And then, you know, there's more space up here and over here. So, lots of space up here. So, I'm going to go we're going to go shopping this afternoon and get some baskets and some bins and some drawers and stuff like that to make that pantry stuff and more storage here. All right.

[00:01:45]This is my office. I've got it pretty much set up and ready to go. I got my office chair in here. The guys were nice because my office chair wouldn't fit through the little walkway down here.

[00:01:53]So, the guys from here were nice enough.

[00:01:54]They took it apart, brought it in here, and put it back together. So, uh I need to get like that's another thing I need to get is some bunggees. And so, what I'm planning to do is get this chair where it will be bungeeed in place right there when we're underway and so it won't slide around. But then just, you know, all this shelving here for everything. Plus, there's more down here. All this storage. I mean, there's just so much storage here. And then on the other side over here is all this storage as well. So, lots of space for storing my stuff here. Now, let me take you. So, right now they're So, we're doing We're not going real fast. We're only at like 400 RPM.

[00:02:30]So, they're just kind of making sure all the vibrations are minimized and everything on the motors. So, I don't know if you can hear it. You can hear a little bit of the I don't know, we're probably at 6 or 700 RPM now. Um, you can hear a little vibration at that, but under Yeah. So, they're working on it.

[00:02:45]So, the motor is right underneath me.

[00:02:49]I mean, you can hear it and there's a little vibration, but like less than there would be if it was an internal combustion engine sitting right behind me is the way it would normally be. So, like still quieter. I mean, it's loud.

[00:03:00]It's not loud. You know, it's white noise. Help me go to sleep. All right.

[00:03:04]I'll take you up to the bow now. Come on up, boys. Come on. So, I got my paddle boards inflated and golly. Test that up.

[00:03:12]I turned it pretty quick and they're there. Got most of my water toys and everything stored under here in the front locker. And then I have the dog bathroom all set up. I got some turf and I zip tied it there. So that is their bathroom. What do you think there, Cook Merlin?

[00:03:32]>> All right, so let's go up top and see what these guys are doing with the autopilot.

[00:03:40]The crew had replaced the autopilot, but they still had some changes they needed to make. So, we headed back to the marina so we could tie up and make those adjustments.

[00:03:51]>> All right. So, we're back on the dock here. They got to do some adjustments to the autopilot and all that. So, we just kind of grabbed a temporary dock here uh so that we can shut everything down and they can work on the steering. And then we'll go back out and try it again.

[00:04:06]Before taking the boat back out, they wanted to make some adjustments to the drive shaft as well. It was making some strange noises.

[00:04:20]>> All right, we're on our way back out to test everything. The autopilot and they they uh realigned the motor on the left on the port side, too. It was a little bit of vibration, so they kind of realigned everything. Uh, so one thing I always do on my boats is I always put like a carabiner on the end of my painter line for my dinghy and then put a Howard knot on. That's a Howard knot.

[00:04:40]The more you pull on that knot, the harder it gets and you eventually you'll never be able to untie it. You just have to like cut it off. But you I don't want this to ever come off cuz what I do is say you're coming back drunk from the bar or something like that. How many times have you tied onto your dinghy and then you're like, "Crap, did I tie that off?" Well, I don't remember. Well, with the carabiner, you put it through here.

[00:05:01]Now I know it's secure, not going anywhere.

[00:05:11]>> Another thing I need to do is they got the painter line attached to the dinghy with just a a bowlan. Um bowlins can come untied. So I I'm not going to go back there now cuz it's, you know, splashy. But when we're not splashy, I'm going to go back there and I'm going to tie a howard knot on that. That way it will not ever come untied. And if I have to ever do it, I just cut it, right? So much safer way to do things.

[00:05:43]All right, so the autopilot is working properly and so C trial complete here.

[00:05:47]So we're coming back in.

[00:05:54]What is it?

[00:05:58]What is it?

[00:06:01]What is it?

[00:06:03]>> All right, we're getting ready to take the boat out on what we hope is the final sea trial. Um, the main reason is cuz there's been some vibration in the motors. We'd like to get down to zero.

[00:06:13]And I think we got the problem solved.

[00:06:14]We've been running it out the dock, you know, normal cruise RPM, one in motor at a time, and it's super quiet. Now, this is your motor right here. And this is the Python drive that, you know, connects the motor to the shaft and all that. And you got the CV joint. And then you got all its mounts. I mean, look how thick these mounts are here and everything. And the main problem is just getting everything aligned. And then you come back here and you got, you know, your dripless. And so the problem is is that just getting everything aligned perfectly. They spent a few days tweaking it and we finally got it solved. It is dead quiet in forward and reverse. You don't feel any vibration now. Uh, so I'll show you that once we get moving here on the sea trial, but pretty excited about it. I mean, it's, you know, it's great. Take you guys with us in a little bit. All right. Well, I didn't even hear us getting moving. Uh, I was just laying on the couch watching TV and then all a sudden I was like, "Wait a minute. I think we're moving." I didn't even hear the motor start or anything. So, it's very quiet. Oh, it's so much quiet. So much quieter than it was just the last time we did the seat tri. It's amazing.

[00:07:24]T boy, dog boy angel boy in the doorway boy. She was a lipstick boy. She was a beauty boy and tears boy and down in your inner space boy. You had girls boy and steel boy. All right. So, we got it set about 550 600 RPM, which is kind of standard cruising RPM. Come on. And let's see here. Let's go down the aft cabin. So, the port side was the one that was giving us the most issues.

[00:08:00]It's definitely better than it was. You can hear a little.

[00:08:07]It's I mean, it's like a wah wah wah wah sound.

[00:08:14]Way better than it was. Still pretty quiet in here considering. Um, let's go on the other side. All right. On the other side, I don't hear that at all.

[00:08:22]It's like dead silent over here. Oh, it's like dead silent over here.

[00:08:29]So, I mean the starboard side is dead silent. Like you barely you just hear the little wor a hum from the motor certain RPM like 700 RPMs it was relatively quiet. 550 600 RPMs is a little bit of wah and then you get over I don't know it's kind of weird resonance there but it's way better than it was. I mean way way quieter than would be for a uh you know diesel engine. I think we're still going to try to work on it obviously to get it better. All right. Uh a lot of you guys have been asking how my boat works. So I'm going to go over the systems with you. I'm going to start today with the electrical and propulsion systems. Uh and then you know maybe every uh every once a week or every episode I will kind of pick another system and go over that with you. So let me start with the propulsion and the house bank batteries that I filmed yesterday and you'll see that now. So this is the port side cabin uh my cabin, the master cabin here. And so underneath the bed in the back there is the house bank. You can see this is the Roy Pal system. It's got five battery banks there. Each one of those is 5 kwatt hours and then the control unit in the middle and it's also got each one has its independent battery monitoring system that you know adjust the charging and discharge rate to monitor temperature and and all that. So the system I have right here has the capability to have up to eight of those 5 kWh um battery packs. And so what I'm going to do so I've got 25 kwatt hours of house bank right now. What I plan to do is uh when I park the boat for the season uh this summer is that I'm going to add three more of those battery banks. So then that'll go from you know 30 it'll be 40 kilowatt hours of lithium batteries which can power everything on this boat for a very long time and I don't have to worry about anything with the 5,000 watts of solar. You know, I can run my air conditioners all night for a couple days in a row without having to recharge the batteries and should be good to go because those battery packs aren't that expensive compared to the overall cost. You can have eight of them together. And then the control unit for those. So, this is my main electrical panel here. So, the control unit for that lives in here.

[00:10:49]And, you know, I've got my I've got my 240 volt system, my 120 volt system, my 12vt system. These are my uh uh billagege pumps. And then this is the control panel for the Roy Pal system. So you can see I'm charging at 2 kilowatts.

[00:11:06]That's just off the solar right now. So I mean I am hooked up to shore power, but the shore power is running the 120 and 240. Um but the batteries are still running the 12vt, which would be the refrigerator and everything else. And then uh that's charging off the solar panel. So it's actually full. So now it's it's it's Yeah. So the it might be charging more, but the battery bank is full. It charged over during the day just on because I got my battery chargers are off here. I can charge through shore power with my battery chargers, but I have those off. This just charged today during solar. So, I can click that. Now, I can look at each individual battery pack, right? And so, I can tell how the health of each of those. Then, I can click on each battery pack and then I can see the individual cells um for each battery pack and their temperature and all that. So, um a lot of good information here. All right. So, now I'll go back down in here and show you the drive system. This is the drive system here. So, this is an electric motor. This is rated at 65 kW and it is liquid cooled. So, this is the coolant lines running and I will show you where those go. But, I mean, just look at how beefy these mounts are here uh all over the place where these mountains. So then you have the thrust plate here and then the Python drive that connects the shaft uh right there and uh yeah, so all that runs together. So then you know you shouldn't really I mean honestly this thing will run forever, but if you did have to replace it, it's really small.

[00:12:37]It's right there and it'd be a lot easier than replacing an internal combustion engine. You would basically just disconnect everything, unbolt it, pull it out, pop a new one in. I mean, literally, you could change this out. If somebody knew what they were doing, they could change out this motor in an hour.

[00:12:53]So, then you trace that shaft back there. Goes through the little dripless system there. And uh yeah, straight out the back. And then this is the uh MCU, the the brains of the motor. And I like how they put it up here under the bed rather than down in the BGE area. Just uh you know, if there was ever any water in the build, uh now the control panel is a little more protected.

[00:13:16]So that was part of the, you know, issue on the very first boat is that it got wet. So that is the motor system here.

[00:13:23]Now, let me show you the battery system that runs the whole uh drive system.

[00:13:29]I'll show you where all those batteries are and I'll show you the battery temperature monitoring system where those coolant where those coolant lines go. So I have two different three different ways actually here that I can connect power. So I have a 220 volt input and I have a 110vt input. And then over here I actually have an EV plug.

[00:13:52]So right now, not too many marinas have EV plugin availability, but you never know in the future. This one's already got the plug for it so that we can plug in should we need to. And then actually I've got a separate um that comes with an EV charger that'll plug into 220 if we need be, just depending on the situation. The way 220 volt power works over here, let me start with America first. The way 220 power volt works over in America, which most of you viewers are, you've got two 110 legs that are basically in in parallel and make one 220. That's not the way it works over here. You just have a single 220 volt uh wire coming in. It's not as simple as that, but I'm simplifying it, right?

[00:14:33]There's there's neutrals and grounds and all that stuff, but for the for simplicity, that's how I'm talking. So right now this is set up to take the single 220 in but it is future uh programmed here.

[00:14:50]So they left a space right there. You see that loop of wire? So the way that would work is you have that loop of wire there. Right now it just runs from the shore power inlet back through everything through the breaker and then on into the system and and on. What you would do when I bring this boat to America is I put an isolation transformer right there where that loop is. So I would take the two 110 lines, put them in isolation or parallel together and synchronize them and all that crap and get it into a single 220 that'll go be fed out to the rest of the boat. So it's a pretty simple add-on later on when they need to do that. So the battery system for the dry bank, you've already seen the house bank. I'll take you to the drive bank. It's got six of these batteries and they are distributed. So you have one battery bank right here and then see this little cover on there. It's just to really keep any splashing. So the the the case itself here, the battery case itself is uh waterproof basically. Um but the connections here are not right.

[00:15:53]You don't want to get corro, you don't get salt water in that. So they put a little cover on the ends. So, if there was water splashing in here, it's not going to get on the ends of the battery.

[00:16:01]So, this is the starboard hole here. And I'll take you over to the port hole where we've got another one. So, there's another battery bank right in there.

[00:16:12]I'll come back to both of these sides here in a minute. And then underneath this aft little seti right here, there are two more batteries. So, there's one that lives right there. It's got the covers on it. And then there's one right next to it under the other seat. So that is four. Let's go forward and I'll show you the other two. All the way here.

[00:16:32]It's just a distribution uh of weight here cuz those battery packs are six of them. They're heavy, right? You know about anything about batteries that big.

[00:16:40]That's a lot of weight. So then they want to keep the distribution of weight as good as they can. So then they have more. And if you'll notice, like anywhere there's a battery, they have these clamshell locks here. So, it is waterproof and sealed. So, under here, you've got two more battery packs. One here and then one there with a little cover on them to keep water. Plus, then there's still uh storage space under here. Pretty deep. Like over there, I've got my uh server rack over there. Now, then you see you got these coolant lines run here. And then this is the uh air gap there, the you know expansion case there for the uh coolant. And all those lines run aft. So I will take you back aft to the uh port side and show you where all those lines run.

[00:17:34]So back over here where you would normally have an internal combustion engine, you've got this is your battery temperature monitoring system. So all the coolant lines run through here.

[00:17:46]and they come into this and you've got these big fans and blowers here that blow air up out through the vents there.

[00:17:53]It acts as a big radiator to cool down the coolant that goes out to the batteries or heat it up. If the batteries are too cold, it'll actually heat them up and uh you know cuz you know the batteries work best at 25° C.

[00:18:07]So if it's you know freezing outside, 0 degrees, they may warm them up uh to get the batteries at their proper operating range. And then and so then also uh it handles the cooling for the electric motors cuz it uses the same coolant system and cools everything off. I'm not going to go under over it now, but you got a lot of other systems here. You got chillers here. You got a chiller there for the air conditioner, water maker.

[00:18:31]You got some uh lift pumps, some high-pressure pumps, all that stuff. And then you have the automatic fire suppression system in each hole there by the by the uh batteries. All right, I'll take you over to the starboard side here where you can see the generator. You may think that that looks just like a internal combustion engine and it is.

[00:18:52]But that is actually the generator. It is a Yanmar 80 horsepower. And then on the back of it here, this is the electric generator. Uh where you would normally have like an output and a transmission, that is the generator. And then the high output lines down below.

[00:19:08]So, if you know anything about Yanmar, you know they're very reliable. It'll last a long time. They're probably one of the best rated uh marine engines out there. And uh so the way it works is that it uses the generator to power the house bank.

[00:19:22]And then there is uh there's just a switch upstairs at the helm that you would turn on to go DC to DC charging.

[00:19:30]So you have your generator start controls here and then your DC toDC charging switch that you would turn on.

[00:19:35]And so that DC/DC charger will use a DC toDC charger and take power from the drive bank and power the house bank with it. So the house bank is powered by the solar panels and there are 4,800 watts right here. And then up here on top of the bimin you've got more solar about 4,800 watts total. So almost 5,000 watts. It has three different uh unit sections. So you got one section here, one section on the other side of the mast, and then this section. They're each hooked up to their each section, there's three sections, is hooked up to its own MPPPT controller. So you get the best power. So far, I've seen about 37 3,800 watts with it. With the 4,800 watts, you're never going to get 100%, right? Depends on the day. So, so the way you power the h the house bank through the solar the DC toDC charging or you can be plugged into shore power and use the battery chargers to charge those. The drive bank you only power two ways, right? So, the drive bank is either charged by the generator or through the EV charging port. So, that's that EV charging port that I said before. Say you're having some issue, generator's not working or whatever, but you need to charge your your uh drive bank. Well, we've got this portable EV charge controller here, and the cabling for it is back there. You would just plug that into 220 and then plug that into your EV charging port, you know, cuz like most if a marina has an EV charging port, just plug that in, you're good to go. But if it doesn't, you can still charge it with that remote EV charger. You just plug it into 220 power and there you go. All right. So, that is a very quick walkthrough of the drive and electrical system for the boat.

[00:21:21]There's so much more to do, but for now, that's what it is. I'll show you more systems in the next video. So, thank you guys for watching. Please make sure you click subscribe, check out the new Sailing Doodles app. Uh we're going to be doing our first sale in a couple days here, and we're going to be live on the Sailing Doodles app and Patreon and all that. Uh so, the app is free to download, but it's got limited functionality unless you're subscribed to it or a patron. you get automatic access to the subscribe portion if you are a patron or a channel member. Still working on the channel member um access to it, the automatic access. Uh I'm just having to go back and forth with Google to get that, but hopefully that'll be soon. So, thank you guys for watching and uh man, it's hot and go inside. It's a beer 30.

[00:22:01]Cougar, how you doing?

[00:22:03]>> Let's go inside where it's cool.

[00:22:08]Yeah.

[00:22:12]Heat.