Sailing SV Delosvideo
We Held Our Breath And Turned It On 🫣 Aluminum Catamaran Build Pt. 75
June 26, 2026 · 20 min · 278K views
What this video covers
The crew of the aluminum catamaran *Delos* successfully energized the vessel’s electrical system for the first time after fabricating a custom bus bar to manage 50 kilowatts of power.1:11 To avoid the $9,000 cost of conventional cabling, the team constructed a bus bar using 80-millimeter-wide tinned copper strips housed in FR4 fiberglass channels.1:11 Before connecting the batteries, the crew used a Megger insulation tester to verify the integrity of the bus bar at 1,000 volts, achieving resistance readings between 600 and 700 megaohms.5:44 With the master battery bank online, the system registered 53.2 volts, enabling the subsequent installation of the NMEA 2000 (N2K) network.9:01 The team balanced the N2K backbone by centering a Maretron Power-T to distribute current equally across approximately 20 devices, including B&G MFDs, autopilot components, and Victron monitoring equipment.11:31 Using an N2K network meter, the crew confirmed 13 volts of bus power and zero bus errors, validating the network design before finalizing the helm station wiring.18:24
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