Category Archives: Articles

Winter Battery Tips

Hello all Grand Banks Owners,

Thank you for inviting me to speak at your Rendezvous this past September.  If you missed it, I’m happy to send the notes from my presentation.  With winter near, I thought I’d give a few quick tips to help those of you who have either wet, lead-acid batteries or Absorbed Glass Mat (AGM) batteries.  So please put on your safety glasses and a pair of nitrile gloves and let’s get to it.  This should only take about 20-30 minutes and a few basic tools.

Tools: Combination (or adjustable) wrench for loosening the nuts on the cable terminal bolts, wire brush and a wire terminal cleaner (one that cleans inside the cable end and fits over the battery terminal), Digital Volt Meter (DVM), electrolyte hydrometer; a gallon of distilled water and a damp yellow microfiber rag for cleanup. 

  1. Loosen and remove cable ends to check for and remove any corrosion on your battery terminals.  Even AGM batteries can develop corrosion because acid may wick from the battery up through the POS terminal to settle between your battery post and cable terminal.  If you discover even a small bit of blue-green or white corrosion, remove the cable end from the battery and clean it away with a wire brush.
  2. If you have terminal protection goop, check to see if it’s “di-electric” type.  This type is NOT good to have between the terminal and the cable end as it is mostly silicone which acts as an insulator.  Best practice is to clean your battery and cable terminals so they are CLEAN.  Reassemble them, metal to metal, tighten everything. THEN you can smear a light coating of battery protection goop.    Other spray-on types of battery protectant material, or smear-on types, are fine when applied sparingly and after everything is tight and done.  Keep in mind that you are only trying to keep the hydrogen gas off the metal, not decorate a cake! 😉
  3. Check your electrolyte levels with a hydrometer (clearly, not possible with AGM models).  If you have enough fluid to suck up into the hydrometer, then you probably have enough fluid in the cell that is above the plates.  You should have about 3/8” to ½” deep electrolyte above the plates in your battery.
    Batteries are low on Charge?  Add just enough to cover the plates before you charge them.  The level will rise when you charge them so be sparing.  When they are fully charged, add just enough more distilled water to get that 3/8” to ½” of electrolyte above the plates.
    Batteries fully charged?  You only need to add enough distilled water to get that 3/8” to ½” level.
  4. Your fully charged batteries at rest (not influenced by your charger having been ON for at least 6 hours) should indicate about 12.6-12.7 volts on your digital volt meter or 1.265 to 1.275 specific gravity reading on your hydrometer.  AGM batteries’ voltage should be slightly higher at 12.7 to 12.8v.
  5. If all is clean and protected, and your batteries are being charged at 13.2v DC (for wet, lead-acid) and 13.4v DC for AGM batteries, then you are all set for the winter PROVIDED you either set your charger (or inverter) to periodically discharge your batteries (say, 2x per month) down to 12.1 volts, or you make a promise to yourself to go boating and accomplish the same thing.  Enjoy the winter and let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

Best regards,
Steve Ahmann, President
Pacific Power Batteries
https://www.pacificpowerbatteries.com/

PSGBOA Members Featured in April’s SEA Magazine

Don’t miss the April edition of SEA magazine (proud sponsors of the 2015 PSGBOA Rendezvous!)… Inside the April edition you’ll find a fantastic six-page spread on PSGBOA members Rusty and Kim Lewis, owners of the 1978 Grand Banks 42 Classic “ARCHIMEDES.”

M/V Archimedes Featured in Sea Magazine

M/V Archimedes Featured in Sea Magazine

The article profiles Rusty and Kim’s travels throughout the Northwest aboard their trusty GB 42. The fun, Q&A style profile also features tons of great photos from their trips aboard ARCHIMEDES.

Pick up the April edition of SEA magazine to read the full story, or visit Rusty and Kim’s blog “The Voyages of  Archimedes” for a link to the story.

Keeping stuff organized

This article was written by Rusty Lewis of the Archimedes and originally appeared on his blog.

I don’t know about your boat, but we have col­lected a drawer full of man­u­als and doc­u­men­ta­tion for the var­i­ous elec­tron­ics and giz­mos on Archimedes. While we occa­sion­ally ref­er­ence one from time to time, they mostly just take up space. Our solu­tion is an iPad and an app called Good Reader ($4.99).

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All the man­u­als we need are avail­able in elec­tronic pdf for­mat. An iPad is the per­fect medium for stor­ing and view­ing these doc­u­ments. There are other tablets and other doc­u­ment reader apps. This is just the com­bi­na­tion we are using.

Good Reader allows us to down­load the man­u­als, orga­nize them, and view them as needed. We also keep elec­tronic copies of impor­tant papers like reg­is­tra­tion, insur­ance, radio license, and EPIRB reg­is­tra­tion on the iPad. It never hurts to have back up copies of the impor­tant stuff. Good Reader does much more than we use it for. It can con­nect to iCloud, Drop­box, and a num­ber of other ser­vices to retrieve pdf’s. Fol­low the link above to see what else it can do.

Good Reader is a fine way to read the lat­est copy of North­west Yacht­ing too!

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Post 2013 Rendezvous Survey

We had a great turnout at the 2013 Puget Sound Grand Banks Rendezvous. About 60 boats and their valiant crews attended. But … we have almost 500 members. Wouldn’t it be amazing to have most, if not all, at the next rendezvous?

We would love to have those that attended weigh in on what would make the rendezvous even better next year. For those who attended, please take a moment to complete our survey. Just ten questions. Short and easy.

Click here to take the survey and help make the next rendezvous fantastic

We thank you in advance for your time and consideration.

We are working diligently on insightful questions to survey those who did not attend.

More light, less power

This article was written by Rusty Lewis of the Archimedes and originally appeared on his blog.

Archimedes came to us with flu­o­res­cent over­head light­ing. The fix­tures are about 12 inches long and built into recesses in the ceil­ing. Each fix­ture holds one ten watt tube. Sadly, they don’t pro­duce much light. In fact, a pre­vi­ous owner went so far as to line the insides of the recesses with alu­minum foil in the hope that would reflect a bit more light. I don’t think that was ter­ri­bly effec­tive. The tubes just don’t put out much light.

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Women on the Water at the Rendezvous

This article was written by Kim Lewis of the Archimedes and originally appeared on her blog.

One thing notable about most cou­ples who take to boat­ing is that when it comes to dock­ing (or gen­er­ally nav­i­gat­ing in tight quar­ters), you’re most likely to find the male at the helm. Note that I didn’t say all, as we have encoun­tered cou­ples where this was not the case at all, it’s just that gen­er­ally speak­ing, it’s the guy who takes the boat into the slip, and the gal who’s stand­ing ready to tie up ashore.

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Happy Boating this Memorial Day weekend

We hope everyone is having a fantastic Memorial Day weekend on their boats. Summer has officially begun.

Happy Memorial Day weekend

Please take a moment to look at that flag we all fly so proudly on our boats and remember that far too many have made the ultimate sacrifice to protect that flag, our country, our freedom, and our way of life.

For those of you who served our country, we thank you for your service. Enjoy your weekend!