Great Loop Cruise Video

W.C. Beardslee in the detroit area. They did the conversion on Nightingale as well.

I have a fantastic guy in the Grand Haven area as well if you chose to layup on this side.

It's usually the marina's electricity that is the problem the majority of the time. They're the ones that don't want to properly maintain and size their electric. For the heck of it, take your trusty voltmeter to the marina restroom (on land) and measure the electricity at the outlet there......I'll bet you it's the voltage you're looking for.

Look at the age of the marinas. That might be a factor. The variations you are seeing are pretty extreme but not shocking. Once had a facility in Chattanooga where we had the reverse problem, too much. Lot's of spikes mid afternoon. First time I ever saw a true brown out when the fluorescent lights actually turned brown.

Hi,

When in these places of dodgy shore power why don't you just run a generator and forget the shore power.

On yachts the size that NYCAP is running, or even 80' and under. The generator on most yachts makes a lot of noise, heat and vibration inside the boat. You can definately tell both in noise and vibration it is running in just about every interior space of the vessel, so it's preferable to have shorepower. Also most marina's don't allow it because the neighbors, who are usually 4' away from you on either side.

Yeah, but usually when you see 208Volts, it's 3 phase electricity that's split up and it's really not good to do that.

Didn't you guys buy a voltage step up transformer to plug between the pedestal on the shorepower cord?

I would use the built in transformers if you have low voltage. It is a lot better on everything electrical to have proper voltage. The transformers are also better at regulating spikes and stuff. Just leave a sticky note on the electrical panel if they're on. You should see the voltage being too high on the meters also if it's too high.

That will come as a shock - no pun intended -to many consumers of electrical power.

There is a wide range of acceptable voltages for any particular level.

https://www.pacificpower.net/conten..._Suppliers/Power_Quality_Standards/1C_2_1.pdf

Every utility will provide the range of voltages they supply and few consumer electrical items will malfunction within that range.

Of course there is variance......but many marina's start out with 208V because it's a lot cheaper to split up 3 phase, then they don't get step up transformers...and/or don't run proper wire size down the dock..and you end up with issues like NYCAP is facing.....and the voltage is 192 or even less.......There is a very popular marina in Miami and I always see 192-195 volts there........also many boats have caught fire from electrical issues at that very same marina and yachts have burned right to the waterline with guests on them.......And good brands and fairly new and well maintained yachts, not some old island engineered POS with sketchy electrical.

Yeah there's an acceptable range for 220V and say 200-240V won't hurt anything, but you start getting below 200 volts and you're going to start burning up electronics and motors on some stuff. But, when you're down to say 192V, then all of your electrical systems are using a lot more amperage causing heat in the wiring and everything else. It also causes breakers to pop etc etc........40 amps at 240 volts = 44 amps at 220 volts, and 51 amps at 190V. Most smaller yachts (100'<) can use 1.5x their shorepower cable capacity at 240 volts if everything is running at the same time, imagine when you're seeing 190 Volts, how many amps you would be drawing.

Then you all leave the boat to go enjoy the town while it's baking in the sun and realize the shorepower popped the breaker while you're gone, the boat is 90F inside, the refrigerators and freezers have been off for 6 hours, water heater etc......and then how many amps are you drawing to get everything back to temperature.

You have a wealth of knowledge and are a great benefit to this forum, but your real world knowledge and experience on smaller yachts in day to day use is not always there. What works on a 200' certainly does not work on a 75'.

It works well on the 48 footer I have owned and maintained for 9 years, it worked well on the 65 foot 1944 tug converted to a yacht that I owned and lived aboard for 6 years before that.

The physics of electrical power does not change with the length of waterline.

My comment was aimed at someone saying that using 208 derived from a 3 phase supply was a bad idea.

Read Table 1 on Page 2 of the linked document. Further information is available if you search the ANSI and NEMA standards for electrical equipment.

http://www.pge.com/includes/docs/pd...ergystatus/powerquality/voltage_tolerance.pdf

An interesting fact that few seem to acknowledge is that motor starting current at reduced voltage is also reduced. High current from low voltage occurs only at full rated load. High voltage is worse for motors than low voltage. Few motors or anything else on a small boat ever run at full rated load, if they did, owners would be freaking out all over the place because those items might reach their nameplate temperature rise and those same folks would be calling the fire department or at least buying new motors because they don't understand ratings. Read the nameplate ... it might be an eye opener and dispel a few myths.

I have no idea why a certain marina appears to experience more fires than another ... does it really? But, to attribute those fires to low voltage might be quite a stretch when the voltage described is within industry and utility standard ranges. I would look more to the demographics of the owners and their maintenance histories.

Bad shore power

I am definately NOT an electrical expert but I do agree with Marmot, the physic laws do not change with the waterline length of a boat.

But I do believe, smaller boats are affected more by unreliable and low quality shore power due to their specific technical setup and type of usage.

Bigger yacht most likely have powerfull and higly advanced shore power converter. They take every voltage, current and frequency available from shore, convert it and deliver perfect stable voltage and sinus wave to the inside of the boat. If there is not enough power available, one of the genis will start, gets synchronized and helps out. If the shore power is exeeding the set limits, the shore power is rejected and the boat is converting to the independend modus.

But as Marmot mentioned, those boats are professionally maintained and operated, a fact that can not always be said about smaller, owner operated boats.

Small boats do not have all of this technical luxury. Low quality shore power will enter the boat via max. an shore power isolating transformer and then directly feeding the AC bus. If you are lucky, a circuit breaker may trip or some delicate eqippment may have a auto shutdown function for bad power supply, but thats it.

Again, I am not an expert as far as electricity is concerned, but I have the feeling, we do not have as many problems with shore power supply with our 240 Volt, single phase and 400 Volt 3-phase power supply in Europe.

In the days back, when I still owned my 49 ft sailboat in Northern Germany, we had some problems with insufficent power supply in our marina, because we had a single 380 Volt 3 Phase cable going from the little town 3 NM away from the marina, where the power was distributed as 220 Volt, max. 8 Amps, 50 Hertz, single phase to the individual jetties. When the local yard started its machinery, the boats got sometimes only 4 to 6 Amps before the CB tripped. And the voltage dropped down to 208 or 210 (which was still in the limits). Some years later, the public power supply in Germany was raised to 240 volt, single phase and 400 Volt, 3-phase and most of our problems were solved. The only problems we still had, if some faulty equippment in the power supply affected the ideal sinus wave. You could hear this by the noisy compressors and motors.

I had two shore power connectors in the boat. One for the AC bus and one dedicated only to the battery chargers. By this connection, I could run the AC bus through the chargers / batteries / inverters even with bad or limited AC supply and the frequency and quality of the sinus wave was of lower interest.

To make things even easier, my next sailboat was a DC boat with internal AC conversion limited to the household items only available in AC. It took a while for this setup to enter the big ship world but our future merchant ships will be pure DC boats for sure.

So my question would be: Is my impression correct, that handling household type electricity is easier and less dangerous with our 240 Volt, single phase / 400 Volt, 3-phase system in Europe than the US type 120 Volt supply ?