Oh, another day off from chugging and another Victron Multiplus problem solved. Owing to the lack of sunshine, there was little solar power to charge the batteries, so the engine had to go on for 2 hrs. Chance then to do some washing. Such fun. But, oh why does the system take so long to charge up the batteries? Two and a half hours later and it’s gone from 67 to 76% ??
Meanwhile, off round the town . . here’s TWO boats fitting into one narrow lock – you don’t see that every day!
And where to? Yes, the Royal Exchange, a Titanic Brewery pub. It has no TV and hence was empty (there’s some kind of footie match on at 1400, England v. Wales).
The very welcoming Michelle was on hand to welcome us . .
There were 7 of their own beers on plus another 6 guest beers – lovely. Viv had a pint of Steerage (3.8%) and “one of the best session beers I have ever tried”. I had a mixture of Plum Porter and Steerage – a Plummage, apparently! Nice.
Yes, we give the town of Stone a good thumbs up. Very welcoming and full of interest.
Now to that techie problem … the manual for our Victron Multiplus, invertor/charger says we should limit the amount of charge the batteries get to 10-20%. The charger side of this gadget is 120 amps and for some reason the previous owner had configured it to just 25% – i.e. 25% of 120 amps. This means the batteries only get 30 amps max. No wonder it takes ages to recharge. I took the front panel off and nervously reconfigured the dip switches so that it was now charging at 75%, i.e. 90 amps. We have a 600 Ah battery bank so, 10 to 20% would be 60 to 120 amps, so I guess 90 is OK.
Running the engine again, just for an hour saw the % charge zoom up to 90% and go into absorption mode. So, success I think. We’ll see how we go when chuggin along tomorrow.
Welsh flags out tomorrow as it’s Viv’s Birthday … yeeeeeeeaaaaah!