The List – 2011 Edition

This year is special in some ways, as some long term upgrades we’ve wanted to do are finally queued up.  Some of these are beyond…well not my skill so much as my confidence in said skill.  I’d rather not, for example spend the next five years tracking down leaks in the watermaker; I’d rather have a contractor to blame on this one!

So without any further adieu…the Massive Project List for 2011

• Watermaker.  This is a big one that I am going to a professional on.  We’ve selected the unit – a Spectra Catalina Mk II.  Our existing watermaker is old, cranky, leaky and broken.  Although it made tasty clean water, it required you to run the generator in order to make water.  The Spectra is a 24V DC system which makes 12 gallons/hr while consuming 7.5 amps.  So we can make water off the batteries with a fraction of the power.  Also the new ones are smart, the Spectra has a “self flush” mode which cleans itself periodically even when you aren’t using it – this gets you out of the business of having to “pickle” the membrane if you don’t use it for a week (like the old one…).
• Wind.  Finally time to add a wind generator to our charging capacity as we continue our quest for renewable energy on board as well as limiting out consumption of diesel.  There are a number of marine wind generators available on the market.  However there are fewer 24V wind generators out there, and the Air Breeze is one of them.  This particular model tends to do well in higher winds, and in fact doesn’t deliver much charging below 10 knots of breeze.  In the teens it matches and starts to outstrip it’s competitors and over 20 knots of sustained breeze it produces more power than we typically use in a day on board.
• Inverter/Charger.  We’ve had it with our Freedom 25 unit.  It does not reliably charge; there is a 15 Amp breaker on it that constantly shuts off.  If you REALLY baby it you can get it to charge.  And I mean…prop up the bed cushion and board over it to get air circulating, put a small fan in front of the exposed crack, and do not do any other charging and maybe this breaker will stay unpopped long enough to get through the Bulk charge cycle and stay on to charge your battery.  This is really annoying when you are running the generator expressly to charge the batteries.  We are still settling on a model – Xantrex (Freedom) no longer offers a replacement for this odd beast.  Since it is from a Euro powered 24V boat it needs to be 24V on the DC side and 220/50Hz on the A/C side, so once again options are limited.  I’m leaning towards a little more charging capacity since our generator produces 6,000 Watts of power using only 2,500 of it to charge seems a little wasteful.
• Life raft.  We’ve been without one for a few years and it’s time to rectify that.  We’ve extended our cruising capabilities some and will go further still.  We’re leaning towards a Winslow, but the array of options and extra equipment for any life raft is bewildering at best.  Spending thousands and thousands of dollars on something you hope you never get to use is…aggravating.  Drawing the line on what to get and what not to get for safety and ditch bag gear and where to get it from.   On the other hand if you need it and you don’t have the safety gear it can kill you.
• Anchor.  Evenstar has two large primary anchors. Unfortunately they are identical 105 pound CQR anchors, a design which is tried and tested and effective in most conditions.  However having two identical anchors on board does not give you any options when you are not in “most” conditions.  There are some weaknesses to the CQR.  The newer Rocna anchor has tested well since it’s introduction in 2004 and we are leaning towards adding one as our primary anchor on the all chain rode and retiring one of the CQR’s.  We have a small (for Evenstar, I think it was a good primary for our last boat) Danforth style “lunch hook” we keep in a locker in theaft of the boat but that is primarily for emergencies where you might need to keep the back of the boat from moving.
• Sea Anchor.  Different from an “Anchor” anchor, in that a sea anchor is used to slow the boat in nasty conditions when you are in deep water.  Essentially a large, tough parachute like device you toss in the water at the end of a lot of rope and chain.  In seriously bad storm conditions you deploy this thing to slow you down and stabilize the boat.  If we’re hoping to take the boat off shore in conditions where you are more than one day from land you need something like this in case you can not avoid the nastiest weather.
• Stove.  The old stove has never quite been right.  The control knobs have always been stiff and the plastic knobs popped off on a couple of the controls ages ago.  A small pair of vice-grips should not be required to cook dinner.  Also we’re pretty certain the oven never had a thermostat, though we can’t really tell because the numbers on the dial have never been visible.  This is a direct request from the Fleet Admiral.
• On board computer.  We have a creaky laptop on board which is getting on in years; the batteries don’t charge the DVD drive doesn’t work, etc. etc.  The plan is to replace it with a “marinized”  permanent desktop that runs on 24V power.  This is a PC in a smaller, special case which will integrate permanently into the boat’s electronics, with a proper LCD monitor (also running on DC power) mounted on a swinging arm at the Nav station.  The swinging arm allows the PC to double as a video player.  We will never have a TV on board, but we do like to watch movies when you are trapped on board by bad weather.
• Sail.  We’re still going around on this one.  But the two full size headsails that  came with the boat, well they were pretty ugly and blown out when we bought her five years ago.  They have not improved with age.  I’m forgetting how to trim a genoa, since it is not actually possible to trim either of our blown out headsails into anything approaching an efficient shape.  The big choices are between a woven sails like our Hydranet main (which we love) or a laminate sail made from a carbon fiber and Technora blend.   That sounds very high tech and like something I would have put on my last boat for racing, but there are cost and other reasons that it might make sense.

Repairs & Maintenance

• Propane system.  Yeah, I will shamefacedly admit to still not having completed this.  It WILL be done, as the stove upgrade is this perfect time to do it anyway.  We will have two 11 lb. propane tanks installed in the propane locker and a solenoid this spring.
• SSB.  I need to learn how to use it, or have someone come to the boat that does and can tell me if mine works.  Because I can’t heard anything on it.  If it’s broken it needs replacing (move it to the list above!) or fixing.
• Main bilge pump needs replacing or repair.  Sprays water in the engine room when you run it now.  Bilge water; this ain’t no Evian or Poland spring spraying on my engine.  Yech; not only is it unsafe its nasty.
• Hatch Lenses.  Our hatches are very crazed (cracked) and in some cases like the V-Berth, leaky.  They will be pulled off the boat and delivered to some guys that will replace the lenses with nice new clear material and replace the seals so the leaks stop.
• Davits.  Need some love, and new cables.  And a new handle.
• Pumps – Oil Change and Seawater.  There is, in theory a built in pump for changing the oil on the boat.  I’ve never seen it work; I’d like to.  There is also an emergency bilge/fire pump, also non functional.  This is a sea water pump that can draw from inside (emergency bilge pump) or outside the boat (fire suppression pump).  Also something that should be working and isn’t.
• Teak.   There are some loose bungs, and I’ve still not forced myself to recaulk all the lazarette and locker covers on the deck.  This may not happen in the Spring, I still feel somewhat traumatized from my last teak adventure.
• Head valve replacement.  One over enthusiastic guest last year over twisted one of the valves in the forward head.  Sadly, it is the valve that keeps the stuff in the holding tank from back flowing in the water, not the valve to send the bowl contents over board.  If it was the latter the head would still be usable.  Fortunately I have spare valves on hand, as they are special and come from Europe.

There are of course some smaller items as well and a few more bits of equipment to add.  But this is the current moderately comprehensive Master List.

Wish me luck.