Finally I could get to work on replacing the Quattro. First thing was to ensure that there was no power on either to 230VAC or the 24VDC cables. And how could it be different – the fuse for the 24VDC supply is buried among cables by the battery bank and I couldn’t just pull a plug but would have to unbolt the fuse. This looked rather dubious, since using a spanner that close to so many other live cables didn’t thrill me. I opted to insulate the cable ends at the Victron end and used my winter gloves as insulators while I applied generous stretches of electrical tape to first the negative black cable and then to the positive cable. The 230VAC was turned off with a simpler breaker and then the replacement began. While the dimensions of the old and new units were identical, Victron did change the mounting bracket holes and I had to drill new holes to hold the device in place. All of the connections were identical so I wired up the temperature sensors, the external voltage sensor, the 3 230V AC connections and the master 24VDC supply as well as the 2 CAT5 communication cables. Then I had to download new software so I could set up the Victron for the battery type and capacity and fine-tune the charging and inverting parameters.
I walked to a local deli for lunch after determining that the local car rental places had closed for the day, when Michael drove by and told me he’d found a location that was open and would drive me there. It was several miles away and when I arrived I was told that the only vehicles left were minivans so I ended up getting a monster truck (well, the Dodge Grand Caravan seemed to be about that big to me).
Everything worked in the end and I celebrated by taking a long sauna ashore and then had a huge prime rib dinner at the clubhouse. I’d missed the weather window for departure on Saturday so the soonest I could get away would be Tuesday at noon, and that gave me some time to relax and switch off from doing boat-related tasks.
