Peter and Geerhard left Whangarei for Port Moresby last week. Especially 8-10th May might be challenging in their first week. This trip is not for the faint-hearthed. They are near Kingston now; how are they?
Near Kingston: Rock and Roll all right
Refit complete: time to say goodbeye to Whangarei!
The refit is complete, Ya is back in the water after the last repairs; Geerhard is on board and the weather is, well, the weather is as good as it will get, so it’s time to say goodbye to Whangarei!
Thank you Riverside drive Marina, for hosting Ya in a familiair atmosphere where yachties and staff look after each other!
Look at this spacious engine room, spic and span!
While Peter completed the refit, Geerhard made sure the boat is fully provisioned, so one of the most important aspects of safety is taken care of; good food, good mood!
Farewell-barbeque with fellow-yachties and staff in Whangarei.
Geerhard enjoys cooking ánd he’s a good cook so that’s one of the reasons Peter’s looking forward to sailing with him:).
Plenty to talk about and no leftovers.
Welcome on board; ready to rock and roll!
Which might well be the case; the triangles signal less favorable conditions like ‘roll’. But Peter and Geerhard are prepared to take good care of each other and Ya. We will keep you posted!
The splash of the Ya
Ya is back in her habitat! Friday morning she went back in the water. What a relief for her and for Peter. It ended up in a launch party on board ‘Ya’ with fellow sailors.
Water from the wrong way, no water from the right way
We discovered a tiny bit of water in the bilge…. from where? Peter tasted…Salt water.. so that’s water coming in from the wrong way.
Party!
The fellow skippers and wifes and crew endlessly working on their boats in the boatyard, could need a break. So last Saturday we organised a Splash Party on board the Ya. Adriana and her mother (just from Spain) made a great tortilla, Gara made cheese cookies, and big bowls of delicious salad made by Geerhard (fresh crew on board, next blog completely about him).
Refit #10
Everything starts getting back together into a ship. The rudders, the windvane back on the transom, the deck panels, wiring, painting, and the surprise of meeting old friends.
Rudders and Windvane steering back on the transom
The solar deck panels
Surveyer
For the insurance the surveyer spent a day with looking, measuring, checking, and a lot of hammering on the hull.
Wiring
What can we say about wiring? It is for the new solar panels on deck, for the new motor displays, the rewiring of the window solar panels. here a small impression.
Varnishing
we
Stig and Anna become neighbours!
We know Stig and Anna already from Gambier, or first Pacific island, where we made a great tour together. Now suddenly, we saw their boat being hauled on the boatyard. What a great surprise!
Ya’s name back on
Cyclone Vaianu hits Ya as a tropical storm.
This curling mass of rain is a typical cyclone. This cyclone is called Vaianu and it travels with a speed of about 20 knots to the South. The red color means heavy rainfall. Here the winds are generally 50 knots, with gusts of about 80 knots. (resp. 95 and 150 km/hr). The more to the South, the colder the temperature of the sea so the lesser the winds. Vayanu becomes a tropical storm when it hits Ya in New Zealand.
This s a screenshot from Predict Wind. The red dot is where the Ya is right now. This is the picture of the very moment that this blog is written. The windmarks show 30 knots of wind, coming from the East, with severe gusts making the Ya tremble and shake all over. The Eastern wind builts up large and steep waves along the shore. If you are sailing along the coast now, you have a problem.
The continuous Eastern wind sweeps the water from the ocean up to the coast. The Ya is now in Whangarei. Normally when the flood turns to ebb, the water level will drop. But tomorrow morning, when it turns to ebb, it is expected that the water level will not fall, simply because the heavy winds have pushed the seawater level some 2 meters higher. So the water from the river will not be able to get out.
Some 6 hours later the eye of the cyclone will pass. The Ya is to the West of the eye of the cyclone. The wind will rapidly turn to South…
… and then to the West. Everything, all debris, that has first been blown to the West, will now be blown back to the East. At sea, the Western winds meet the West going waves. This creates hectic and unpredictable waves. No ship can handle these waves. This is when ships perish.
Lucky us, the Ya is in Whangarei on blocks, on the boatyard. The only water she will feel, is rain water soaking from her deck along the hull. And perhaps the bottom will feel a touch of river water when the water rises beyond the banks of the river. But, while writing this blog, she shakes and trembles all over. Respect for Mother Nature.
Putin and Trump’s wars can fuel a fossil free development
Column
Wars are usually short-term, or at best medium-term, events. However, they can be incredibly effective in bringing about long-term changes, lasting for many decades, or centuries.
Some examples.
Industrialization and the emancipation of the working class into a middle class began even before the First World War. But immediately after the First World War, broad industrialization got underway. We see world leadership shifting from Great Britain to the United States. First in the United States, but soon also in Europe, we see the middle class growing strongly.
The First World War resulted in 20 million deaths. The confrontation with so much violence, of such unprecedented massive scale, already led to a strong pacifism. The Second World War was the turning point for formulating policy based on this. The establishment of the United Nations is one example; the establishment of the European Coal and Steel Community (which was the first step towards the European Union) is another example of preventing war. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) is one. The subsequent European Convention on Human Rights (1958) contains concrete regulations to protect people against greater powers. For example, Chapter 8 regulates the protection of refugees. Each nation also enacted privacy legislation to prevent governments or large corporations from knowing too much about you and me.
The fossil free future
We now view sustainability as a new problem. Again, a long-term issue. As early as 1987, the UN Brundtland Commission concluded that sustainable development is necessary. Simply put, this is the development that does not compromise the lives of future generations. An example: we should cut down our CO2 emissions, because otherwise our lives will cease to exist in the future.
Presidents Putin and President Trump have both started wars that are driving up oil an d gas prices significantly. Meanwhile, renewables can be manufactured much more cheaply. Fossil fuels still have the unique selling point that they can also be deployed when wind and solar power fail. But now that batteries are becoming increasingly cheaper and last longer (almost endlessly), that advantage is also short-lived. At this moment, the purchase of a battery bank is already at the break-even point. And to think that battery innovations in China, Europe and California continue to follow one another, while more and more second-hand batteries are coming out of vehicles that can still perform excellently at home for years to come.
President Putin and President Trump, the side effect of your wars may well be of great significance in pricing the use of fossil fuels out of the market for good. To a sustainable future.
Peter
Refit 8
It is a small working week because we had two days with an awfull lot of rain and there was not much to do inside. There is stuff from Holland and Poland, a new service battery, Peter Kaad the electronic engineer started working on the replacement of the Etech displays, and Adri and me started on installing the deck panels.
just a shot of a part of a lot more spare parts and they all have to find their way into the Ya.
Refit 7
Progress. Jobs are finished and that is nice. Jurgen started a new job on the entrance frame last week, Peter is reinstalling the motor controllers that has been taken up and down to Europe for a revision.
The extinction of old batteries – bringing fossilfree energy for all
What about a future with this environment but then without the power plant on it?
It could very well be the future. The reason: LFP batteries, like the ones in the Ya and in the new electric cars (almost) never get ‘old’ anymore.
Some 10 years ago the LFP battery started to conquer its place in the market. In 2021 the batteries were installed on the Ya. But still that was expensive. Now, they have become cheaper and cheaper. The battery is also very effective. The kWh per kilo weight has increased, so the range in kilometers an electric car can make, increased. The electric car is becoming a competitor to the fossil car.
Another major disadvantage of a battery was the aging. With every charge, the capacity decreases slightly. After about 1,000 charging cycles, only 80 percent remained, meaning you had 24 kWh of power in your battery instead of 30, good for a ride of only 144 kilometers. At that point, the battery is considered old and due for replacement. On average, you achieved 162 kilometers over those first 1,000 charging cycles, making a total of 162,000 kilometers.
The LFP batteries last longer—1,500 instead of 1,000 cycles—before reaching 80 percent. The more modern LFP battery even reaches 5,000 charging cycles.
Translate that into kilometers, and for lithium-ion, you get 1,500 times 90 percent times 65 kWh times 6 kilometers (in fact, that could already be 7). That is 526,500 kilometers. At 13,000 kilometers per year (the Dutch average for passenger cars), the battery already lasts 40 years before it ‘needs’ to be replaced. The LFP battery only reaches 80 percent after 1.7 million kilometers, or 135 years.
No car lasts that long. We like to trade in good cars because the new version has extra safety features and new gadgets. On average, I think a car lasts ten years now. And if we start living more frugally, the current electric car might reach twenty years. By then, the lithium-ion battery will still be good for 90 percent charging capacity, and the LFP is not yet ‘as good as new’.
You aren’t going to throw those batteries away; that would be madness. So, a second life for batteries is being devised. That already happened in 2018, when the first batteries from crashed cars became available. The Johan Cruijff Arena in Amsterdam was equipped with about a hundred ‘old’ car batteries that could store a combined 2,800 kWh of electricity. When combined, the lights in the Arena were literally visible. The test turned out well, and the battery park has since been expanded to 8,600 kWh, or 8.6 MWh.
Second-hand batteries are now appearing in more and more places to store electricity on a large scale. The amount of car batteries we discard annually is growing rapidly. Last year alone, we bought 156,000 electric cars (plus another 176,000 hybrids with smaller batteries). If these are discarded after more than fifteen years, ten million kWh of batteries become available for reuse almost for free. And that happens every year. Within a few years, you will have enough old batteries to cover the electricity demand of the entire evening peak.
And that is just talking about passenger cars. More and more buses are driving electric, and by now, half of all new trucks in China are electric. Then you are not talking about batteries of 65, but of 650 kWh. And they will all be discarded eventually.
China, the country where most batteries are manufactured, has already calculated that by 2050, old batteries could cover two-thirds of its total energy demand.
This will have great consequenses. First, we will all get a battery pack at home, and a big one at work. This will shave the peeks in the electricity usage. The electricity can become cheaper. And it can be sustainable, because there will be no more fossil power plants necessary.
Second, the network can change completely. Now the electricity network is based on security of supply. But if we all have our own decentralized power in stored, we don’t need power when it is not available for a day or more. The electricity network can do what it is good at: just transport electricity.
It means that we won’t need power plants. Also the nuclear energy plants will be obsolete. The LFP battery fills the gab to create a sustainable energy use.
So, what about a future with this environment but then without the power plant on it?
Refit 6
Especially the painters made progress: After 3 rounds of filling, 3 times primering and 3 topcoats, the Ya’s side boards are coated. You like it?
Terry and Simon painted and Adriana did the mixing. In one day everything was done, with a fine and consistent result. The final touch will be a double waterline and then the Ya is like new.
But there is done more.
So there is more to do.