Equipment – Sailing Pearl: Travels on a Beneteau Oceanis 373

Generators: Comparing Honda 2000i to Yamaha 2000i

Having installed an air conditioner, we then faced the questions of powering it while at anchor. If you are wondering about our sudden fascination with air conditioning, while the ideal is a boat swinging quietly at anchor, loved one(s) ensconced comfortably in the cockpit sipping chilled “Dom Peringnon,” listening to the quite tropical music….The reality can be sweat soaked nights spent in a stifling boat with swarms of bugs from the apocalypse eating you alive. We said “NO!” to that. We added a generator.

As you know from the Air Conditioner story, space on Pearl is limited. Getting a generator was once again a challenging balance of power requirements vs. form factor. The ideal generator to get would have been a Yamaha 2500. The space we have, however, would not permit that. So back to the 2000 watt gennys.

While there are several generators in this class, we decided that we wanted either a Honda or a Yamaha. We considered the Hyundai which looks comparable, but decided against it because of the poor reviews on Amazon. Both Honda and Yamaha are reputedly super quiet and super reliable — and theoretically can support our AC, a 16000 BTU Dometic/Marine Air Envirocomfort.

The full load on the generator is 10.5A for the air conditioner and 2.35A for the March Sea Water Circulation pump. While this is 12.85A, close to the rated load the tricky bit seems to be handling the power surge that hits the generator on startup.

Comparison of Honda 2000i vs. Yamaha 2000i

	Honda 2000 i	Yamaha 2000 i
Displacement	98.5cc	79cc
AC Output	120V 2000W max.	120 V2000 watts
Max	16.7A	16.7A
Rated	13.3A	13.3A
DC Outputs	8A @ 12V	8A @ 12V
Starting System	Recoil	Recoil
Fuel Tank Capacity	.95 gal	1.1 Gal
Runtime	3.4hr @ rated load 8.1 hrs @ 1/4 load	10.5 hrs @ 1/4 load
Dimensions (LxWxH)	20.2″ x 11.4″ x 16.7″	19.3 x 11.0 x 17.9 in
Noise Level	59 dB(A) @ rated load 53dB(A) @ 1/4 load
Weight	45.6 lb.	41.1 lb
Warranty	3 yrs	3yrs

The specs for both generators are essentially the same, except that the Honda has a 25% larger motor and the Yamaha has a larger fuel tank and run time. If you do a feature comparison, the Yamaha seems to be a bit better set up for regular use. For example, it has a fuel shut-off that lets you run the tank out of gas. This is important if you are using ethanol enriched fuel as the ethanol dries up in your fuel line causing all kinds of aggravation.

In all of the reviews we read online (mostly RV sites), there was some mention that the Yamaha would not support the power surge when an air conditioner started, but the Honda would. This seemed a bit sketchy given the identical specs, but we wanted to investigate the issue before committing. There is nothing like buying a bit of equipment that doesn’t work that you can’t return. So off we went to the Yamaha dealer.

Note: There is a soft starter that should theoretically reduce the power surge when the air conditioner starts up. That, however, adds an additional $500-ish to the project cost. When you look at the electrical components on the Dometic AC, there are a couple of large capacitors that made me wonder about the utility of a soft start. This discussion on Sailnet is worth reading if you are planning to install an AC and run it off a generator.

Vince, the sales manager at Garrison Bight Yamaha (local Key West Dealer who we know from other Yamha gear we have) listened to my tale of woe. He immediately offered to let us borrow and test one of the generators. In fact he brought one over to Pearl the next morning for us to try out. Our test were a bit disappointing. The Yamaha failed — unequivocally. Try as we might, we could not get it to power the air conditioner — even the power cord made a difference.

We also testes a Honda 2000i belonging to our friend James from Sail Florida Adventures. His Honda worked— no problem. Actually, James has a Beneteau with the same Air Conditioner so we were pretty sure it would work. We just wanted to verify it for ourselves. Caveat emptor.

While we would like some of the bells and whistles on the Yamaha, we are thrilled that we can now have air conditioning while at anchor with the Honda! Friends at the marina we are at have joked that we’ve now moved from being sailors to Yachtsmen. Perhaps. There is something to be said for creature comforts, particularly not being chewed up by bugs.

I’d love to hear about your experiences with generator and air conditioners if you have any — or about minimalist sailing which we seem to have eschewed.

Choosing a new Dinghy for Pearl

Sadly, we had to retire Ziply Banana Rocket, the AMI XL 300 we purchased in Portland last year. While she was new out of the box, she’d been made in 2009, which when she was relocated to the “tropics” caused some one of her tubes to leak.

As a result we decided to donate her to the Key West Community Sailing Center (a sailing co-op with the skills and resources to fix her). They plan to use her as a chase boat for the youth sailing program. “Come here little duckies!” We were very sad to see her go. The question was with what we were going to replace her.

The matrix of choices when it comes to buying a dinghy are pretty impressive.

PVC or Hypalon
Rigid hull Inflatable Boat or Rollup (hard or slatted floor)
Air floor or Hard Floor
Aluminium or Fibre glass hull RIB
Single or double hull

The choice between PVC and Hypalon seems pretty easy. If you’re in the tropics, choose Hypalon. The issue according to a repair shop that I spoke with is that the glue used on PVC degrades in temps around 80 degrees causing the seems to fail and the tubes to leak over time. Apparently the glue used in the construction of Hypalon boats doesn’t suffer the same problem — hence the choice for us.

The choice between RIB or Roll-up has has to do with space. It’s arguable that RIBs are heavier than Roll-ups, however the roll-up we had was heavier than the RIB we have now.

Ribs are great. The are drier, plane faster, and are more robust from the perspective of driving them up on a beach. The downside is that you either need to be willing to tow it, store it on deck, or lift it on davits.

A roll-up, on the other hand will “roll up,” you can put it in a dinghy stuff sack, and turn it into a nice little package that can even be lashed on the fore deck or even stored in a locker. The down side is that they are wetter, less comfortable on long rides, and potentially less durable.

There are a couple of three choices for Roll-Up dinks, soft/air floor, slatted floor, or hard floor. We didn’t spend much time on these options because we wanted a hard floored RIB as a result of Harley. What I have heard, however, is that the high pressure floors with an inflatable keel work quite well to get you on a plane, etc. Based on personal experience, the slatted floors are not great for anything but very minimal use. The hard decks are quite nice, our previous dinghy had them and they worked very well. The only downside is that you have to find the space to store the floorboards.

If you choose a RIB, you have to decide between an Aluminium or Fiberglass hull. Aluminium is more durable than fiber glass, it is more resistant to dings than the gelcoat on the fiberglass hulls but more challenging to repair. They are also lighter! We wanted an aluminum hull but finally opted for fiberglass due to the cost ($5000 instead of $4000) and availability.

Note that there is a very affordably priced aluminum hulled Highfield RIB. We opted not to go with this as the buyer for a major online retailer who’d evaluated the dinks refused to carry them as he thought that the hull-tube bond would fail as the hull was powder coated before the tubes were glued on. I would encourage you to do your own research on this one. AB, however, has a couple of very nice but expensive aluminium hulled RIB models.

After all of that, we came up with the following criteria:

Must be made of Hypalon: it last better than PVC in the tropics
Must be light as it will be carried on davits
Must be rated for a 20 hp engine: what we have–> Must be FAST! (Lisa)

After looking at several dinghies, we ended up with the following short list:

– Caribe 10X @ ~ $3500.00
– Achilles HB315DX @ $4000.00
– Zodiac Cadet 310 RIB @ $3000.00
– AB VL10 @ $4000.00
– Highfield UL 310/340 @ $3000.00

The general consensus among the cruisers and sales people we spoke with was get either a Caribe, Avon, or AB. Our initial preference was to get the Caribe 10X which is double hulled, has a bow, locker, etc. When we looked at a Westmarine 340 which had a bow locker, the locker seemed pretty pointless, and it seemed like we be better off and save the weight by getting a “single hull. Also, the “single hull” on the AB isn’t really accurate as the VL has a flat floor.

While we did not personally inspect and test all five choices, what we did find out was that it’s really hard to get Caribes any more as they come out of Venezuela. We also found out that dinghy sales people were remarkably disinterested in selling product in this price range. The notable exceptions were Adam and Mike at the Inflatable Boat Center in Portland, OR and Jeff at Lifeline Inflatables in Miami from which we purchased our dink.

What we finally purchased and extremely happy with is an AB VL 10. It has the right combination of features for us and most importantly, seems to be very well put together. Stay tuned for pics and video of our new dink!

What you have above are a lot of my opinions and I’ve made a number of generalizations that you should take for what they are worth. On the off chance you are buying a dinghy, I hope they will give you some food for thought. If you have navigated this process yourself, I would love to hear you thoughts and opinions.

Our 9 Best Upgrades to Pearl for Cruising

We are finally done with boat projects and upgrades to Pearl to make our cruising life more comfortable. After all the theorizing, what we actually have done follows:

1. Dinghy Davits

Lisa and I decided that davits were a “must have.” There are several reasons for this:

(a) Improved boat performance: you don’t end up dragging the dink, allowing the boat to move a knot or so faster.

(b) Safety: you have an easily deployed life raft if necessary. Yes, we have a seperate life raft, but ….

(c) Security: dinghies are better stored “on board” than in the water; needing to climb aboard a boat to cut a dinghy free tends to deter prospective thieves.

The davits we finally settled on are from Garhauer Marine. They are very well made, and I highly recommend them.

2. A Hypalon Dinghy

Sadly, Ziply Banana Rocket, the Yellow AMI XL 300 PVC dinghy we purchased last year started to fail. This was due to the glue that holds the boat together being eroded by the heat and UV in Florida. Given that a dinghy is a critical piece if equipment when cruising, we opted to purchase an AB RIB (Rigid hull Inflatable Boat).

The big deal with hypalon vs. PVC fabric in the tropics isn’t about the fabric itself. It has to do with the glue that holds the fabric together. According to a inflatable boat wright (?) I chatted with, PVC glue start to fail at about 80 F. Since one is consistently above that temp in the tropics, PVC boats tend to fail sooner rather than later as we saw with the AMI.

3. Upgraded Navionics

Given that the Raymarine Pathfinder Radar had started to glitch and that charts for the chart plotter were pretty expensive, we decided to upgrade all of the navigation electronics and radar, and add in AIS display capability. Oddly enough this was less expensive than buying the electronic chart kits for where we wanted to go cruising. The net result is improved visibility of surrounding traffic as well as less expensive charts!

4. Foredeck Shade

Given that we haven’t added a high capacity generator to Pearl, we figured we’d go with a low tech solution: a deck shade that keeps the sun off the fore deck. Surprisingly, the shade noticably drops the temp in the V berth. Also, the shade is well enough constructed and laced on that we leave it up during storms — for which it can also serve as a rain catcher if required. The shade was definitely worth the $ 380 it cost to get made.

5. Filters on the fuel systems

We’ve added a Racor 500 filter on Pearl. This replaced the Racor 230 (?) that came standard. Additionally we’ve opted to add a couple of fuel shutoff vales to this to facilitate filter replacement rather than running a dual filter system. While I gather you can use vise grips on the fuel lines when changing filters instead of having shut off valves, that seemed a bit dodgy to me.

We’ve also added a Racor 120 gasoline filter for the outboard that will hopefully minimize problems there.

6. “Eye Lids” for the Portlights

Keeping the port light open when it rained was a bit of an issue. It made the boat stuffy and uninhabitable. We’ve added “eyelids” for the port lights which mostly keep the rain out of the boat. These cost appromimately $50 each from Portshade.com and were super easy to install. This was another worthwhile investment as it keeps the boat ventilated.

7. Marine VHF with AIS / Digital Selective Calling

We upgraded the original I-Com to a Standard Horizon Matrix AIS+. There are a couple of cool features to this change. The first is that it has Digital Selective Calling, which enables you to call a specific vessel based on their MMSI number (which most commercial vessels advertise via AIS). The second is that it integrates with the Raymarine e7D and a67 chart plotter/MFDs to provide enable AIS displays on the chart plotter. So, now we can identify the vessel we need to call and reach them directly.

It would be slick to be able to be able to tap the AIS icon on the chart plotter to have a call placed, but that seems way over the top at the moment.

7. Upgraded Bilge Pumps

Pearl came equiped with an approximately 200 gph bilge pump. I hadn’t really thought about what that really meant until I sat down and figured out how much water we’d take on if one of the sea cocks or through hulls failed. That calculation resulted us adding a 2000 gph bilge pump that is plumbed into the boat as well as a 4000 gph portable bilge pump. A couple of things to note are that what bilge pumps are rated for and how much they actually put out depend on the input battery voltage, how far the water’s being lifted, and I believe, how many plastic buckets one has.

8. Flooded to AGM Batteries

Pearl originally had 200 Ah house battery bank, We’ve upped this to 520 Ah, and changed from flooded batteries to maintenance free AGMs. We figured that AGMs are better for a a few reasons: the first is that they don’t require maintenace, the second is that they are more resistant to being bounced around. The third is that they can be drawn down without damaging the cells.

9. Electric Pump on the Head

Ok. The head in this case is the toilet. We decided to replace the Jabsco hand pump with en electric macerator pump to clear the toilet bowl as we seemed to have interminable problems with the joker valves on the manual pump. This is a nasty mess on which you don’t need the details. The short version is that we a quite happy with the result.

There are several other little tweaks we’ve made — e.g. adding a plexiglass splash guard to the galley sink, a clothes line in the head, etc. The upgrades listed above are our best guess at our most important improvements for cruising.

We’d love to hear from you if you have suggestions based on you experiences!

Upgrading Pearl for Extended Travel

So having hung around the marinas for a while, lived on the boat, and generally tried to adapt to cruising life, I’ve come up with a list of stuff with which to upgrade Pearl. There is a magic balance here. On the one hand I don’t want so much gear on board that I can’t swing a cat. On the other, there are things — like water — that can be a serious pain in the posterior to acquire when traveling abroad.

My design goal here is to be able to project Pearl an unspecified distance for an undetermined period — single handed. Note that short of building a “generation” spaceship replete with an farm on board, this is not very realistic. It does, however, pose interesting questions regarding energy consumption/production, water (!!!), and crew workload/rest.

It’s useful to note that people have traveled in sailboats for a long time without any of the stuff that I am considering adding, and that there are fail-safe behavioral rather than technological solutions to all of the problems I am trying to solve.

To this end, there are three projects upgrades to Pearl that I think would be useful, which I will discuss individually as they evolve.

Project #1: Power Generation
Pearl currently has only two energy sources on board — her sails which are used for propulsion, and the her diesel engine which is an auxiliary propulsion system as well as the source for generating electrical power that is stored in batteries. There isn’t an issue with the propulsion systems. The big question has to do with electrical power for all of the conveniences that are “must haves” on board.

There are three options for supplementary electrical power — a gas or diesel generator, a wind generator, and solar panels. There are two parts to this equation: demand and supply. The magic I am trying to figure out at the moment is how to increase the renewable power supply from solar and/or wind, cut demand, keep up with the power requirements for snazzy electronic gear while under sail, and find a place to park the batteries required for power storage.

Project #2: Water Maker
This is a really sore topic that I am in the process of researching. On the one hand, the dock-side scuttlebutt is that you can’t live without a water maker, particularly if you don’t have giant water tanks 200 – 400 gallons, and particularly in the Bahamas. Pearl carries “only” 100 gallons of water. While I figured I could use 3 – 5 gals of fresh water per person per day. This still makes for water stops every 10 days to 2 weeks. There is also the option of supplemental water (e.g. bottled) for drinking, jerry cans, and a rain catcher (?!?). Stay tuned on the story behind this one.

Project #3: Navionics
Pearl currently has a great chartplotter, autopilot, depth sounder/sonar, radar, and radios (VHF and HAM/SSB). The dodgy bit is that the chart plotter is old, the Jeppesen charts for it are egregiously expensive (more expensive than the cost of new gear for the east cost alone), and the radar is essentially dead. The current generation of that gear is pretty slick and offers a bunch of interesting safety enhancements like integrated AIS (think transponders for ships) and MARPA based radar guard zones that allow you of potential collisions and threats. Oh, and all of this can be displayed on an iPhone or iPad, as a bonus.

Stay tuned. More to come.

Backing Your Sea Cocks / Through Hull Fittings

Okay. If you got past the title on this one, you’d probably thing “sounds kinky, and not likely to be fun.” For those of you who are wondering what a “sea cock” or “through hull” is, it’s a tap/pipe fitting that covers up a hole in a boat allowing water (typically) to be taken in or dumped out. For example, there is a sea cock / through hull to pull water into the engine to cool it. There is also one for the sink to drain out. These are arguably necessary holes in one’s boat.

The problem here is that a sea cock is a hole in the boat. If the fitting fails, there is a distinct possibility that the boat will SINK — an unnerving thought at the best of times. I’ve been paying attention to Pearl’s through hulls after recently figuring out that her bilge pumps will not keep her afloat if one fails. I’ve had to replace one sea cock already as a result of a cracked nut, so I think that I should replace the rest with more robust models that and install backing plates to make them more secure.

Here’s a picture of the some of Pearl’s sea cocks without backing under the sink in the head ( a.k.a. toilet) along with the infamous shower pump.

There’s a pretty good article of how to install backing on though hulls at Jamestown Distributors. It’s something to think about the next time you pull your boat to get it painted.

A “Ghetto-Fabulous” Inexpensive Boat Airconditioner in 5 Steps

Not to denigrate ghettos in any way since several of my closest friends live in them, …. The solution that Lisa and I came up with for an air conditioner with which to survive summer in Florida was literally that: a jerry rigged but very effective, inexpensive installation. Yes, it does make Pearl look a little bit like the Clampett’s truck, but I can live with that for the moment. At least we aren’t sweating.

Requirements for a Ghetto-Fabulous AC

An appropriately sized AC for your boat
A suitable place (like a forward hatch) to install it
A roll of non-marking 3M Duct Tape
A sheet of plexiglass
About 2 feet of bath-liner vinyl (this is pretty wide so you need to cut it down)
Installation Instructions

Cut a rectangular piece of plexiglass approximately the width and height of the front of the AC
Square the AC off in front of one of the forward hatches so that the plexiglass sits on the hatch at an angle
Attach the plexiglass just above the air intake panel for the AC
Drape the bath liner vinyl over the AC so that it covers the front of the AC that would be inside the window in which it’s installed and tape it to the AC
Fold or cut the vinyl as required so that it can be taped to the deck.

That’s pretty much all it takes to get up and running. You can make the system more efficient by taping the plexiglass to the vinyl sheet. There will be other tweaks you can make depending on your boat, but this is about as quick, dirty, and effective as it gets.

There are several people I know who install window style ac units in the companionway. That turns into a huge pain as you have to clamber over it every time you try to get in or out of the cabin.

We’d love to hear if you have a better idea on how to cool your boat for cheap!

Airconditioning — to sweat or not to sweat

Having finally go back on Pearl after essentially six months of traveling around (Portland, Atlanta, 3 cross country trips, South Carolina, etc.,), Pearl is in serious need of some TLC. Given that it summer in Florida, one of the first orders of business as far as I was concerned was to get the boat air conditioned again. Without an AC, working below decks makes working in a sauna sound attractive.

So, on to the ACs. There are three basic options for air conditioning one’s sailboat. The one you choose, as with anything else, depends on a combination of budget, storage space, and aesthetics.

Option #1: Sea Water Cooled ACs

This the ideal. It’s integrated with the boat, making it a magical oasis of blissful cool in the tropical sun. All you need to do is plug into shore power or fire up your generator and the magic will happen — but for a price. These babies cost about $2500 for the necessary hardware and about the same for installation by a professional. As an added benefit, these ACs can also be used as heaters if you happen to be somewhere cold. Check out this handy guide at Dometic for more details.

Option #2: Portable ACs

This was the first option I tried. The basic idea is that you park the air conditioner some place in the salon or head, run the ducting to a port light, power it up and you are off to the races. Sounds simple enough, and really is — until you get hit by rain, have to close the port light so the boat doesn’t get flooded, and en up broiling below decks.

I was really pretty excited about this option (actually used it for most of last year) and it worked pretty well until Lisa and Harley came on board. Adding two more bodies seriously cut down on the available space and increased the heating requirements. Next.

Option #3: Window Unit

On first glance, a “Window Shaker” seems like the least attractive option for adding AC to the boat, but as it turns out, this solution has great merit. Firstly, this is the least cost per BTU if you get a household unit from Home Depot. Secondly, you don’t lose interior space. Thirdly, if installed correctly, it works great even it it’s raining! Ok, so it looks a bit “ghetto,” to have an AC strapped on deck, but for the price, I can live with that.

Summary

Initially, I was really keen on getting a sea water cooled system, but given a choice between spending $5000 on an AC or comparable amounts on either a water maker or upgrading the navionics, I decided to choose the latter. My rationale here is that if we are cruising, we aren’t likely to be using the AC too much as I don’t want to add a big generator, the fuel to run it, blah, blah. Quite frankly, I would rather have balmy tropical breezes at an anchorage. Air conditioning, however, is mandatory when you are at a slip where there is access to shore-power etc. If we find ourselves at a slip outside the US for any length of time, my guess is that we would be able to replicate the window-shaker solution for relatively low cost.

More shortly on how to I handled installing a Window Shaker Air Conditioner on Pearl….

Satellite Phone Service for cheap

I love being able to use my HF radio to communicate with people (via email mostly) while away from the dock. After running into a problem with signal propagation due to sun spots a while ago, I’ve been contemplating getting a Inmarsat phone to that I can make paniced calls for help should that be necessary instead of lighting of my EPIRB.

The following site seems to offer a decent deal on sat phones for emergency use. Check them out if you need one!?!

http://www.satphonestore.com/

Cheaper Maps — Getting Discounted Jeppesen CMAP NT+ Chart Cartridges

February 29, 2012 — Portland, OR

If the phrase “chart cartridges” doesn’t mean anything to you don’t bother reading further. If it does, and your chart plotter uses Jeppesen data you will find the following pretty helpful.

Having become completely enthralled by Navionics, the thought of traversing the Caribbean without my best friend the chart plotter is beginning to give me the willies. The net of it is that I needed to buy chart cartridges to cover the entire Caribbean — that’s four chart cartridges at $200.00 a pop. Ouch! What was that about about BOAT = Break Out Another Thousand?

It turns out, however, that if you join Club Jeppesen (cost $85) you get one chart update for free. Further, if you have chart cartridges to trade, that drops the cost per cartridge to about $85. What this did for me and my 4 new cartridges is it cut an $800 bill to about $ 550 — a roughly 30% discount. Sweeeeeet!

While this isn’t price compettetive as the FREE NOAA raster charts that you can get using iNavx on an iPad, the benefits are that it integrates well with Otto the aoutopilot and give one the warm fuzzy feeling that one knows where one is.

Increasing Efficiency: Swapping out Halogen Bulbs for LEDs

February 22, 2012 — Portland, OR

There are two things that give me pause for thought on Pearl: water use and power use. While I haven’t spent a lot of time evaluating either of these from living aboard before going cruising, I am trying to make a bunch of optimizations around these issues based on what I hope is common sense.

While not establishing a baseline is generally a bad idea — i.e. undetermined starting point — I’ve purchased a bunch of LEDs that were delivered yesterday to replace the halogen and incandescent bulbs on board Pearl.

The incandescent bulbs are primarily used in the Navigation lights. The Halogens are used in the interior spaces (salon, cabin, etc). While I expect power consumption from lighting to be more of an issue while at anchor than under sail, the idea of using only about 10% of the power we’d otherwise be using is pretty attractive — particularly since I found a relatively inexpensive source online for the bulbs at Super Bright LEDs.

Note that while you will have to poke around the site a bit to find what you are looking for, the prices are pretty darned good. Also, I’ve tried out several different bulbs. The conventional wisdom seems to be to get as many LEDs as you can on the “bulb” mountind surface. This hasn’t worked out so well for me. The lights end up being too bright and that requires installation of a dimmer. Super Bright has some slightly lower power LEDs that I think should work well.

Stay tuned. I’ll let you know how all of this experiment turns out.

Safety Equipment for Cruising: Take 1

February 02, 2012 — Portland, OR

Okay. Faced with the imminent prospect of setting sail, I realize that a Horse Shoe buoy, a Life Sling, and a bunch of expired flares don’t quite cut it as safety gear. There’s a bunch of stuff that the prudent mariner would take along for heading off shore. The big question is what gear do you actually need? Continue reading “Safety Equipment for Cruising: Take 1”