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Volga – Boat Electrical Setup – Current State and Upgrade Options

I’m working on the boat’s electrical system, which is designed as two redundant setups.

Current Solar Equipment

6 × 200 W Renogy 24 V solar panels

Space for a 7th panel when needed

1 × 50 A Tracer MPPT

1 × 40 A Tracer MPPT

Existing Temporary Power Setup

Setup One – High-Load / Cooking

2 × 300 Ah Renogy 12 V LiFePO₄ batteries

Old 3000 W 12 V inverter

Powers: Travel kettle, Induction hob

2x Batteries: https://uk.renogy.com/products/core-mini-12-8v-300ah-lithium-iron-phosphate-battery?variant=51704535646526

Setup Two – House / Low-Power

1 × 100 Ah 24 V LiFePO₄ (no-name) with junction box with fuses

Loads:

2 × 45 W USB-C chargers

24 V → 12 V 20 A DC-DC converter for legacy gear

Mounted as a single unit on a plywood board

Physical Changes – Both systems need to be moved onto a new 18 mm wooden platform under the floor, to improve space usage and add ballast.

Planned Architecture – The goal is to split the system into:

24 V house system (lighting, pumps, USB, laptops, legacy gear)

48 V high-power system for induction cooking and a future 48 V electric 8 hp outboard motor

Moving to 48 V is necessary to get enough power for the outboard and reduce current, cable size, and wiring cost to improve overall efficiency.

Solar layout:

One side of the boat fits 4 panels → feeds the 48 V system

The other side fits 3 panels → feeds the 24 V house system

Upgrade Options for the 48 V Side

Option 1 – Build 48 V from Existing 12 V Batteries by buying 2 more 300 Ah Renogy 12 V batteries. Configure 4 × 12 V in series → 48 V, 300 Ah

Feed a new all-in-one 48 V inverter

Frees up the 40 A Tracer MPPT for the house bank

Pros

Uses the same battery model

IP65-rated (important below the waterline)

Very strong starting capacity: 300 Ah @ 48 V

Cons

More wiring, more space needed

Cost: ~£1,200

Option 2 – Server-Rack Battery for 48 V

Move the existing 2 × 300 Ah 12 V batteries to the 24 V house system

Remove the no-name 24 V battery

Buy a 48 V 100 Ah server-rack battery: https://uk.eco-worthy.com/products/eco-worthy-48v51-2v-100ah-server-rack-battery-with-bluetooth-wifi-5-12kwh-lithium-battery-version-3

Add more batteries later as needed (especially once the motor is installed)

Pros

Much simpler wiring, built-in breakers, BMS communication, monitoring and better space efficiency. They will also be easier to expand and likely better balanced long-term

Cons

Metal case, not waterproof

Will need a second unit fairly soon for the outboard

Cost

£1,000 initially

  • ~£600 later for expansion

Bonus

House system ends up with 300 Ah @ 24 V instead of just 100 Ah

Pros and Cons by System

Cooking / Outboard (48 V Side)

12 V batteries in series (Option 1):

More wiring and space

IP65 rating is a big advantage, as batteries sit below the waterline and flooding is a real risk

Native 48 V batteries (Option 2):

Better packaging and cleaner install

Built-in safety and monitoring

Easier upgrades

Less water-resistant

House System (24 V Side)

Current setup works, but:

The no-name battery may not be reliable long-term

More capacity is always useful

Planned addition:

24 V diesel heater (backup to the wood burner)

Extra capacity will matter in:

Dark winters

Periods when the wood burner isn’t usable

Bottom Line

Once everything is costed properly, both options end up close in price.
The real trade-off is between:

Waterproof, modular 12 V batteries (robust, proven, messy wiring)

Clean, native 48 V systems (tidy, scalable, but less flood-tolerant)

The decision really comes down to flood risk vs long-term simplicity and expandability.

UPDATE: the problem with the metal cased batteries will be condensation, leading to rust and failing circuits.

#DRAFT

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Ballasting our lifeboat

There are 3 issues to address with ballast:
1. Levelling the boat. We are currently back heavy therefore we will try to move the weight about.
2. Stabilizing the boat mediating roll. This is currently a big issue if we encounter waves from the side. Weight low down in keel.
3. Hull depth in the water. More weight everywhere.

Below is a cross section of our lifeboat. We got 10x50kg steel plates to add to our current foundation brick and concrete block ballast.

This is about 500kg we will be adding to the front and center of the boat as low down as we can.

The boat is specified to carry 61 people and supplies, likely more than 5000kg but the weight is evenly distributed throughout the boat.

With 2 people and our current ballast we likely have less than 1500kg in the boat. She is 80cm in the water and is designed to be 120cm in the water, so obviously more weight is needed for stability

The question we are asking is the distribution of the weight. Thinking of putting most of this weight in the front and center as this is where she is highest in the water. But we are worried about the structural strength of the single skin fiberglass on the keel to hold this much weight in a limited space.

The ballast has been a big sucess so far after testing with the wash of passing boats for a few weeks. The 500kg steel placed below the waterline has worked wonders for boat stability. She no longer bounces at all when hit by small waves from the side.

And she is now level (only 1degree up at the bow at cruising speed.

By eye she is 10cm ish deeper in the water. We still need to measure when we find a spot with clean water and a sunny day to go over the side with a tape measure 🙂

BUT she does shudder and we are worrying about the hull flexing if we hit big waves in our sea test. We are going to remove all the old concrete and bricks, maybe 300-400 kg which is now mostly above the waterline. Leave this in Lubeck harbour and take her out for a few days to sea in calm weather as there are a few nice sheltered bays 5-6 hours up the coast to anchor.

Then head back into town adjust the ballast and then batten it down so that it cannot move at all.

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Logbook: The Danube – Kelheim to Linz

August / September 2017

The Danube River runs from Germany to the Black Sea through 10 countries. As we cruise downriver, the “mighty river” changes it’s name from Donau, Duna, Dunaj or Dunarea.

The German Town of Kelheim at km 2411 is our entry point. We have 2411km and 19 locks to go before we reach the Black Sea!

We had planned to stop before reaching the River, but as we arrived close to the end of the Rhine-Main-Donau Canal the only moorings available are for big cruise boats, making it impossible for us to stop, even if for only a couple of hours to look at the charts and prepare ourselves. We see on Google maps that there is a marina in town, but to reach it we need to get to the big river and head upriver for a few kilometers. We did try, but we couldn’t make it. The river was running too fast and as we tried to get to the sides where the current is slower we found out it was too shallow as well and we ended up turning back. Downriver it is!

The mighty river is big, fast and absolutely gorgeous. We can’t see any side arms, as on the Rhine, where we could anchor, and mooring along the sides is absolutely impossible. It’s getting late and we do need to stop. We moore on an unused lock sportsboat landing before Regensburg, for the night.

We get to Regensburg, one of the towns mentioned on the book we read before starting this journey “Sailing Across Europe”. Here, Flame, the Dutch barge that travelled from Holland to the Black Sea in the 1920’s is caught in whirlpools and almost hits a bridge. We head to town as we need to stock-up with food, pass a series of small marinas and boat clubs but none of them seems to have any guest mooring places. As we reach the bridge, a cruise boat is heading upriver, we stop to let him pass as we think cruise boats have right-of-way, but then he stops as well. A moment of hesitation, he decides to pass. In no time the river accelerates as it gets closer to the bridge and we are fastly dragged way too close to the stone pillars. Hamish makes a hard turn and max power, just a few meters away from the bridge. If we had hit the bridge we could have sunk. We look at the “Mighty River” with much more respect from now on.

We cruise the German Danube for a few days mooring in lock landings, a marina and anchor behind an island where the current is slower and almost without noticing we get to the next country: Austria.

Passau is the last of the German towns, but again, all mooring places are reserved for the big cruise ships and we end up spending the first Austrian night moored alongside a big rusty barge that was anchored off the navigation channel.

It’s now late August, the river is running fast due to heavy rains upriver, the only boats we pass are either huge cargo boats or cruise ships and they both bounce us about everytime they pass. We are offered a mooring place on a little port and told to “keep right when you get in” which we did, but then there were rocks and we may have made a more centered entrance, so we got stuck in the mud. We’ve asked a passing wooden boat to help us out which they did manage to do after a couple of tries.

Our host tells us to stop a few km downriver on a small inlet pontoon from a guesthouse/restaurant in Obermuhl where we end up staying for a week, as the water levels start to change dramatically everyday and we are advised to wait for it to stabilise. After a week, and with the water levels almost reaching the maximum allowed for small boats to navigate, we decide to set off or we would get stuck there for at least another week. We fastly reach Linz! Our boat is doing 18km/h, the river is fast and full of whirlpools and driftwood.

We safely moore by Eleonore a arty boat that hosts artists residencies and surprisingly meet a enthusiastic boating community. The second we find since leaving London. The regulations in Austria are though very strict making it almost impossible to live-a-board, but that doesn’t stop this group of people from taking advantage of the Danube as much as they can.

The plan this year was to get to Serbia, but it’s getting late in the year, we’re getting tired and stressed and our new friends find us just the perfect place to leave the boat for winter. The only problem is that the boatclub is about 20km upriver and there is no way we can make it with our boat with such a strong current. No problem, we get pushed by Markus’s bike ferry.

The first year on the Danube reaches an end. We will be back next year.

#boatingeurope

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Logbook: The Ludwig Canal

August 2017

The Ludwig Canal is the original canal that connected the Danube and the Main rivers on the 19th century, now replaced for a wider modern connection, the Rhine–Main–Danube Canal.

Both old and new, start in Bamberg and cut the german mountains all the way to Kelheim, reaching the european summit point that divides the watersheds between the North and the Black Seas 400m above sea level. This is the highest point on Earth that is currently reached by commercial watercraft from the sea.

The Ludwig is the canal taken by “Flame”on the book “Sailing Across Europe” that we read before starting our journey. On the book, only one chapter is dedicated to this stretch of water, that connects the Rhine Basin with the Danube Basin, but the description is so fantastic, the pace is so slow, the landscape so beautiful, that we were curious to see how much of it was left, if any at all.

To our surprise, there is still about 60km left of the original channel, out of the 177km, some of the locks still work, but it is not navigable, and only possible to reach by bike.

While cruising down the new Main-Donau-Canal one can see parts of the original canal alongside the new one. The lock-keepers houses are now being refurbished to serve as infrastructure to a new bike route that will take bikers along the old canal.

The original 177km length narrow canal had 101 locks, 100 bridges, 10 aqueducts, 63 lockkeeper’s houses and 500.000 fruit trees planted at regular intervals, boats had to be towed part of the journey, but due to the lack of water and heavy damages suffered during WWII, it ended up being closed. It was replaced in 1992 by a new bigger infrastructure,the Rhine–Main–Danube Canal that connects the North Sea and the Atlantic Ocean to the Black Sea, providing a navigable artery between the Rhine delta and the Danube Delta, to where we’re heading.

The new Canal has 16 locks, the deepest one being 24m deep. Boats are not suppose to stop along the way, but we’re slow and have to ask the lock-keepers permission to stop for the night close to the locks. They do complain a bit, but they always end up allowing us to stay.

It takes us 8 days from Bamberg to Kelheim, with a stop for a couple of days in Nuremberg, to do the 171km long canal. We’ve reached the Danube!

This file is in the public domain according to the German copyright law; scanned at 250 dpi

 

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Logbook: Breakdowns

July 2017

We have the first break-down, one year into our Boating Europe journey, along the Rhone-Rhine Canal, just before we get into the infamous Rhine River.

The Rhone-Rhine Canal is the last bit of the French Canals System before the Rhine. 237km and 112 locks that takes us 1,5months to go through. Slowly enjoying the french countryside and the small boat world life while we can, as once we get to the Rhine we get into big rivers and big cargo ships world until the Black Sea.

The plan is to stop in Mulhouse, to pick up some plumbing parts we got online and ordered to the local marina. But as we are about to arrive to the big town, a weird clanking noise on the engine, and Hamish realises the coolant box just snapped out off the engine.

We need to stop or we might have coolant spread all over the engine soon and a bigger problem in hands.

We explain our allocated VNF (Vois Navigables de France) lock-keepers that had been operating the last few locks what happened and they promptly offer to help. One of them comes inside, looks at the broken piece and realises we do need to weld it somehow. We stop on the next lock, Hamish and the VNF guy removes the broken bit and they both go to a VNF warehouse nearby to cut a new one. Half an hour later we have a new shinny metal bracket that we hope will last for at least 6 months. Anyway, they get us an appointment with a local boatyard just past Mulhouse to see if anything stronger and long lasting can be put in place. As it’s Friday evening and everything will be closed for the weekend we spend the weekend in town. Mulhouse is the liveliest place we’ve been for the last few months, after the abandoned french countryside, mixed architecture styles and crepes. Always the crepes.

On Monday morning we head to boatyard, but has the boat is on the water there’s not too much to be done. The coolant box is fixed with the new metal angle to the shaky engine, and we just hope this will last us until we take the boat out of water in the winter.

It lasts two weeks! As we set sail from a beautiful anchoring place on the old Rhine to escape an approaching storm, we notice the new piece has a crack on it. The strong winds make us bang against a lock wall as we approach it and the new piece snaps off again from the engine. But we are now so close to Strasbourg we’ll try to make it to town. We take turns between holding the snapped coolant box with our hands inside the engine and driving. After a long noisy ride we make it to the last lock before Strasbourg but as we need to wait for a few ships ahead, we tie ourselves to the side bollards and switch the engine off. When the lock light turns green, indicating we can go inside, the engine doesn’t switch on.

We get stuck on the lock for a couple of days, trying to get either a mechanic to look at the boat, or a tow, both will be very expansive, but we just can’t stay there, tied to the side wall, with the strong stormy wind banging against the sides and huge 200m boats passing just a couple meters distance from us.

We get a mechanic in, hoping he will fix the engine just enough to make us get to Strasbourg on our own, with no luck. the starter motor is gone and nothing can be done where we are. We need a new starter motor and a towe to town. The French speaker lock-keeper gets us in touch with the local marina and we get a “special price” tow with the boat from the marina’s owner.

We get to Strasbourg, tied to a metal pleasure boat, not as we expected, but we get there! Good to be out of the lock and able to go for a walk.

We end up staying in Strasbourg one month. Had to wait for the new starter motor to be delivered, once it was replaced, the starter batteries stopped working needing as well replacement, we still have an on-going electrical issue going on that would be good to sort out as we’re at it, and we need to properly fix the snapped coolant box.

We stayed for free in the marina while waiting for all broken bits. The break-down already costed us near €800 with the tow, new starter motor and new batteries plus the few hours of mechanical service, so was nice not to have that extra cost. Marinas are usually not cheap places.

Hamish gets to know a few nearby live-a-board boaters, during one of his evening walks, doing some welding to their boats and he manages to get a new metal bracket for our coolant box, that same evening. We end up mooring next to Didier’s Peniche, for the rest of the month. A month of vegetarian bbq’s, evening drinks, good talks, and live music with his band every Wednesday evenings and we get help relocating the coolant box to a remote place in the engine where it wouldn’t snap again.

We leave Strasbourg a month later, this time on our own. Early morning start at 6.00am. We’re eager to continue our European journey along the Rhine.

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Logbook: Souterrain de Riqueval

15th July 2016

We saw on the map, a few tunnels before reaching Paris.

Along Canal du Nord, the Grand Souterrain de Ruyaulcourt, with a total length of 4350m where big barges and boats enter simultaneously from both North and South to meet and pass each other in a wider section in the center. Listening to all boaters’ tales on the way, looks we are required to have at least 20m of ropes, in order to be able to go through the tunnel. We hear lots of stressful stories of boats banging against the sides and big barges that are on their commercial route with little or no patience for small pleasure boats. The stories don’t make us particularly excited with the thought of sharing the 4km tunnel with the big barges so we decide for the alternate parallel route along the Canal de Saint-Quentin, the scenic route along the Champagne region.

Along this canal we have the Souterrain the Riqueval with 5670m followed by the smaller Souterrain de Lesdins with ‘only’ 1098m long. At last these won’t have any barges. Should be easy.

We stop for the night in the small village of Venduilhe on the day before Bastille Day. Venduilhe is a weird place, the vibe is heavy, we can’t find a single shop or cafe and can’t recall if we did even cross anyone on the streets during our evening walk and the ones on the houses look slightly suspiciously at us and close the doors as we pass. During the night fireworks to celebrate Bastille Day, suddenly there are lots of people coming from all sides, wonder where these people were during the day… There is a party in town but we don’t join.

Following day is a bank holiday and the tunnel will be closed so we spend the day on an   old industrial port, next to a big abandoned grain silo. In the evening we move the boat from the village to the tunnel entrance to get away from town and so that we’re ready first thing next morning. We thought there would be a queue of boats, but looks we’re the only ones when we wake up next morning.

At 7am the tow boat is waiting for us with 2 French guys not speaking a word of English. They look at our boat with a face that clearly shows they have never seen anything similar before. They are suppose to use two crossed ropes from their boat to ours but Hamish is reluctant to fix anything to the sprinkler system bars and we are reduced to one rope fix to the hook in front of the boat. We are not allowed to turn on the engine inside the tunnel in any circumstances, so I stay inside steering if necessary and on the look-out on the back, Hamish is on the roof looking out at the front.

The electrical tow boat starts heading slowly inside. We’re underground for the next 6km. We start bouncing off the sides a few meters later, Hamish tries to shout to the tow boat guys to tell them to slow down, unsuccessfully! The horn doesn’t work as well (we have a bit of a temperamental one that doesn’t work everytime we really need it). He pushes out the front I push out the back when necessary. We’re scrapping along the sides. Ana adjusts slightly the steering wheel which seems to work and puts us on a more steady route. It takes 1.30h to reach the other side of the tunnel, we bring bits of tunnel with us on the tires but no major scrapes on the hull. We’re ready for the second tunnel. We will be able to steer on this one.

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Logbook: Calais to [almost] Paris

August 2016

A couple weeks after our channel crossing we finally set out to Paris. The plan is to reach Paris in a month as Ana has to be back in London. We set off from Calais around 12pm on the 1st of July 2016 and we get stuck right on the first lock. Lunch time (we learn locks do close for lunch, usually between 12-2pm). We wait. As around 2.30pm no one arrives we call the number written on a little paper left on the door. The lock-keeper will arrive shortly, if now one had called him, he would simply not show up. This will be our assigned lock-keeper for the next few locks, running on his bike along the canal with us.

The Canal Nord de Calais is a narrow canal, slightly same with as the River Lee in London and takes us along abandoned factories, a few refurbished wharehouses, but mostly big cropped fields, empty little villages and not one single boat. It’s noticeable that this canal was in the past busy with barges, as we pass lots of rusty metal cranes used in the past to load up barges, but now the boats have been replaced by either trains or trucks and these structures are left as a memory, along the canal, one after the other.

1 lock and 4 mobile bridges later, we turn South to Canal de Neuffose. This is a much wider stretch of water than what we are used to, and looks more like a river than a canal to our English standards. Boats are much bigger here as well we soon realise. The ‘Peniches’, the traditional French inland barge originally built in the 19th century, with 89m long do scare us a bit when we first cross them, after all we are only 7m long.. the wash is quite something and pulls us to the sides if we’re not careful. This is a very green canal, the cropped fields give way to long corridors of trees and we find a few WWII bunkers on the way that we stop and visit, small villages and very big locks!

In Betune, the Canal de Neuffose turns into Canal d’Aire, followed by Canal de Derivation de La Scarpe and Canal de la Sensée. We change from one canal to another almost without us noticing, if it weren’t the way the locks open. Some have lock-keepers, on another canal we are given a command to open/close/fill with water/empty with water,  on another one the lock is operated through a rope hanging in the middle of the Canal that opens the lock ahead when twisted or pushed (we need to work it out) or the elevating bollards on the bigger locks.

On this main route to Paris from the big Port of Dunkirk, we decide to turn East along the Canal de la Sensée and South along the Canal de l’Escaut that turns into Canal de Saint-Quentin in Cambrai, instead of continuing South along the busy Canal du Nord. This alternate route will be a bit longer but much more relaxed and picturesque we are told and will take us along the green valleys of the Champagne region and the beautiful towns of Saint-Quentin, Reims, Chateau-Thierry or Beaux.

In Épernay the Canal turns into the Marne river that will take us to Paris. It’s amazing how different it is to cruise on a river, one can feel how alive it is, and the current makes us run faster. We get to 10km/h in some stretches. Mooring is more challenging now and right on our first stop, Hamish jumps out to get the ropes and suddenly the current takes ‘Milda’ away and Ana is left on her own on the big river for a bit. First time alone on the boat and it had to be on a river with a strong current. Hamish shouts instructions, a bit of panic but we make it, Hamish back on board and off to the next stop.

Ana makes it back to London, almost in Paris, and Hamish heads to the big city and the infamous Loire River in his own, until we meet again in a french canal to be decided.
We still haven’t filled up with diesel since England and Hamish is on a mission for the next few days of getting some as we believe we must be close to an empty tank.

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Logbook: The English Channel

19th of June 2016

After a few weeks waiting along the Medway for a 3-day-good-weather window that would allow us to cross the English Channel, safely without being caught by surprise with a sudden change of weather, Hamish got a ‘competent’ crew together, Hoawel, Ramin, Ligia and myself and we’re off.

We’ve ‘set sail’ from Ramsgate Marina, down to Dover at 5.30 am to take advantage of the currents and from there across to Calais. When we got to Dover we were approached by a British gun boat, were asked to identify ourselves via the radio and how many onboard. Hamish in control, all good, we’re set to go!

We have an android app that traces all big tankers along the way, their speed and how far they are, a map with the location of all the buoys we need to follow, a compass, and a radar reflector on the roof to make ourselves visible to big ships, 1 person driving, 1 with an eye on the app and maps, 2 on the lookout.

It took us 8 hours to make it to France. The sea was mostly calm, half-meter high waves, a bit of rain, but relaxed so Hamish, that got a bit seasick takes a nap. When we were getting closer to France, the visibility was not great, we lost track of the buoys and decided to follow the Ferries. One of them got confused with this orange lifeboat with graffitied tentacles, stopped to contact us by radio to ask if we needed any help, but our radio didn’t work this time and 20 min later a French lifeboat approached us, ready to save us. Realizing we were just a pleasure boat they started to take pictures waving friendly at us. Bienvenue to France! We made it!

Crew got in touch with Calais asking permission to enter the port. They asked us to wait for the next ferry and then we could get in. Next ferry comes trough, we follow, no one stops us, all gates opening ahead of us, no one asks for passports or check the boat. And we’re in the French inland waterways system.