Month 1, Captain’s equipment evaluation
Since its exactly a month that we left, its time to look over the equipment and rate it after a month of use:
The Rig:
Sundowner had a racing rig. I am aware of this and will not put too much strain on it until I have more faith. As our rigger Frank says, you don’t see many of those rigs go down. Few C&C 38’s have circumnavigated and crossed the oceans so its doable. I just don’t want to be the one to loose the rig. We have a –10 nitronic50 rod from navtec. Frank replaced the backstay with insulators, headstay, and upper portions of the upper shrouds in august. He also made us an inner forestay that we are gonna use with ABI release lever and a base that connects through deck to the reinforced bulkhead holding a chainplate in the v-birth chain locker. I installed a tee-fitting tang just up from the second spreader and about 12 inches below are tangs for the running backstay. I still have to splice the runners. We also have a baby stay which along with single lower shrouds form a base triangle to keep lower part of the mast in column. The upper portion of the mast experienced quite a bit of pumping in the passed, which in my opinion caused some of the fatigue on the stemball fittings. This is why I replaced the upper portion of the upper shrouds. I am hoping that with runners and inner forestay, we can keep the upper section of the mast in check. We’ll see. Although with the help of Gary, another C&C38 owner, we tuned the rig to perfection, the rod stretched and we were out of tune by the time we reached Chesapeake. I put a total of 6 turns on uppers and two on lowers. The mast is still working a bit so I might adjust the turnbuckles again. Headstay roller furling got adjusted as well. The headstay was too loose making a pretty big curve as we sailed upwind. The rake on the mast and tensioning the backstay adjuster didn’t help. I took several turns on the headstay until it got noticeably tighter. Now we get a better shape on the upwind tack.
Engine:
The poor atomic 4. I am beating it to death. No one expected a small atomic 4 to push an overloaded 38 footer. But it’s working pretty good. Be reminded that this is supercharged atomic 4 with fresh-water cooling (FWC), oil changing kit, electronic ignition, crankcase ventilation, reduction drive, new accessory drive, and new carburtor. The engine is also coping with oversized 125A alternator and three-stage regulator. I had to install a switch that cuts the alternator output in half whenever needed. I am glad I changed oil about a week before entering ICW. The waterway is brutal. We have 8-9 hour motoring sessions daily. I am having problems with explosive fumes alarm. It keeps coming on. I keep thinking it’s the gas leak that we had but its not. There is no smell of gas in the bilge. The other possible causes are propane we use for cooking, and hydrogen from led acid batteries. The last day, we did 9 hours of motoring and the alarm didn’t turn on at all. I think it was the alternator gassing up the batteries pretty good. I keep the alternator on half output and that keeps the voltage from going into 14.5-15V and prevent the batteries from gassing. The other thing that could have casue the alram was the hole on the manifold. It was supposed to have a bypass hose to the bottom of the carburator. The little copper bypass hose corroded. I plugged the carburator end, but never did it on the manifold. If this was causing the alarm to turn on then we are probably burning too much fuel. The mixture was probably too rich. So I adjusted the mixture valve after plugging the manifold hole.
The engine is starting to run hot. I think the heat exchanger is not adequate. I will look for a second one to put in series. I also have an unnecessary reduced section of pipe between the temperature control valve and heat exchanger. I will get the larger pipe to replace it. Maybe that increases the volume of antifreeze and helps keep the temperature down. At the moment the engine temperature climbs to 190F if we motor at 1500RPM. Motorsailing helps a lot. If we get wind, even 5-10 knots and motorsail, the RPMs can stay in 1500, but the temperature drops to 180F. We also pick up 1-2 knots. I check the antifreeze weekly, making sure it is toped off. I am also making sure there are no kinks in the hoses, and that all the hose clamps are tight.
Batteries:
So far so good. We have 4 trojan SCS225 130AH 12V led acid batteries and one more 120AH led acid battery all hooked up in parallel for 640AH total house bank. Plenty of juice for our needs! We have a small group 24 75AH starting battery, which is charged with echo charger. This one is the first one I thought was gassing and causing the explosive fume alarm to go on. I installed the switch to shut off the echo charger. This could have been the cause of the alarm turning on all the time. Anyhow, the batteries are due for distilled water fill up and I’ll do the in Belhaven.
Charging:
We have engine mounted Amptech 125A alternator and Xantrex three stage regulator. Besides adding the switch that cuts off the alternator output in half, I also took apart the alternator and cleaned off the dust from the belt. I retightened the belt once since it was new on October 1. We have plenty of belts and a spare 100A alternator.
Fourwinds II is a wind generator mounted at the stern pole. Its working as advertised with plenty of juice when it blows 20+. Amazing, I got reading of 15 amps few nights ago when it blew 20-25 knots. The only problem is that my supporting stays are not high enough. This causes some vibrations that need to be worked on. Because of this, at 30+ I have to shut it down, and that works ok. I wait for wind to die down and use the switch that shorts out the generator. Then I quickly climb up, turn the blades away from the wind and tie them down.
We also have to solar panels kyocera 130TM (new model). They are great. They were rated at 8.3A, but over the summer when the sun was high up we got 11-12A from each one. This is the greatest passive source of energy on earth. With no moving parts, they are very reliable. Just wipe them down and make sure nothing is there to break the glass. We keep our on top of the bimini. It survived the gale force winds in NJ and Chesapeake. Controller works ok as well.
Watermaker:
We have a home built high output watermaker what we are very VERY pleased with. All stainless CAT pump works good giving a flow 0f 1.5GPM at 800-1000PSI. All the hoses and connectors are still holding on tight. No leaks in high-pressure lines. Membranes and pressure vessels are in series and working good. I had problems with pressure gauge leaking but that was because I tightened it too much. I got a new one which works good. The only and big drawback is that the watermaker and pre-pump uses in the vicinity of 90 amps at 900psi. But we get about 30GPH product, from two SW302540 membranes. So we fill up water tanks in 2-3 hours. It was a pain to install the membranes, but they work and don’t leak. From RI to Norfolk VA, we used the dock water once in Pt Jefferson NY. Other than that, we ran the watermaker all the time in clean water. I drank the water for a month now, and I still have 1gal jugs with water made from Chesapeake Bay that I drink, cook with, and make tea and coffee. I run it and flush it every third day. I need to order some spares while I can.
Cooking/Heating:
We have two 20gal LP tanks that I mounted astern in mahagony cradle. I stitched up a sunbrella cover for it, and they are rust free. The stove is a new Seaward products’ Princess three burner with oven. It works good with no problem whatsoever. I kept the old 10gal LP tank onto which we mounted the small 1500btu heater which heats up the cabin to 80F in 15 minutes. We run it every night during and after showers.
Cold/Hot Water:
With so much engine runtime we have no problems with hot water. We take hot showers every night. 6 gallon tank lasts for both me and Crystal. She goes first just in case it runs out. I still get plenty of hot water to shower. The pressure pump works fine but we turn it on only for showers. We found out that using foot pumps saves tremendous amounts of water so we don’t have to fill up tanks as often. About a week if we don’t shower every single day.
Autopilot:
Autohelm 4000 ST. Needs lubing and maintenance. It’s getting hard to disengage it. Other than that it works fine. Can’t use it in ICW unless we are in the open bodies of water such as Abemarle and Pamlico sounds. It makes the boat follow an S shape course wondering off course too far.
Monitor Windvane really didn’t have a chance to perform yet. We’ll take a look at that in the gulf stream crossing to Bahamas.
Inverter:
Shore Power 1500W inverter works great. Crystal makes coffee every morning using out coffee maker from home. She can even plug in the curling iron. I use the heat gun to melt the heat-shrink when I do any wiring work. I used jig-saw, drill, sewing machine and other 110V equipment readily without a problem.
Sewing machine:
Ultrafeed LSZ portable sailmaking machine. Work great. We stitched up everything around the cabin. Dodger, bimini, covers for bumbers, grill, winches. We made all interior cushions and outside cockpit cushions with it. So far it has worked superb. We broke bunch of needles but that machine is indestructible. I patched up sails on deck, on three occasions.
Navigation/Radar:
Cheap JRC 1000 from Ebay! Works good. For what I know. I use it to check distances to obstacles, and never really had a chance to use it in fog. I like that I can display GPS speed and position on the radar display in the cockpit.
Navigation/Charts:
Garmain 120 external antenna, and portable handheld GPSmap 172. Works good. I soldered a serial connector so that we can display our position on the laptop. We use Offshore Navigator Electronic charting Software (thanks, Pedro!!) with NOAA downloaded raster charts on a dell Inspiron 8600 ruining windows XP (suicide). But we are not dead yet. The charts were wrong only once since Providence, RI. But that’s the time we ran aground at night in ICW. Dell hasn’t crashed wile navigating once. But it did crash while playing around with offshore navigator software. Once we get to Bahamas we are switching to paper charts. This will be a new experience for us since we are so used to computer and GPS putting us on the map automatically.
Ground tackle: We got plenty of it. Our primary 45lbs CQR is on 300feet of 5/16 BBB galvanized chain(Thanks Miles). Holds no matter what. Windlass is Lofrans Airon 1000Watt, with new gipsy. All work good. The chain never gets stuck in the gipsy or the chainpipe. The bow roller is designed for 35 lbs CQR. Using the 45lbs anchor puts on a lot of beating on the bow roller. But its holding up ok so far. I make it a point to clean the mud off, after few days. Our spare anchor is 35lbs CQR on a 100feet of 3/8 BBB chain. We also have a 25lbs danforth on 10 feet of 5/16” BBB chain. I think we still need a storm anchor. But I am not sure.
Fridge:
Our refridgiration system is from EZCold. It came with the cold plate which I installed at the deep end of the icebox. I created a plexiglass divider that separated the frozen part(freezer) from the rest. I also added a shelf in the deep part of the fridge. Since its top loading the space is not utilized extremely well but we manage to have eggs, milk, fruits and vegetables and all other ordinary houshold items, just in smaller quantities. The compressor is Danfoss BD50 that has air and water cooling. The waterpump definately needed a strainer at the intake since any crumbs in the line will clogg it and the cooling water will not flow. The energy usage is pretty good. I cannot estimate exactly how much that is but I do know that with our energy production we have no problem keeping the freezer portion completely frozen. I have added a significant portiuon of insulation styrofoam to keep engine heat away from the freezer box. It payed off tremendeously as the hours of compressor runtime dropped by about a third from last year to this year.
The Rig:
Sundowner had a racing rig. I am aware of this and will not put too much strain on it until I have more faith. As our rigger Frank says, you don’t see many of those rigs go down. Few C&C 38’s have circumnavigated and crossed the oceans so its doable. I just don’t want to be the one to loose the rig. We have a –10 nitronic50 rod from navtec. Frank replaced the backstay with insulators, headstay, and upper portions of the upper shrouds in august. He also made us an inner forestay that we are gonna use with ABI release lever and a base that connects through deck to the reinforced bulkhead holding a chainplate in the v-birth chain locker. I installed a tee-fitting tang just up from the second spreader and about 12 inches below are tangs for the running backstay. I still have to splice the runners. We also have a baby stay which along with single lower shrouds form a base triangle to keep lower part of the mast in column. The upper portion of the mast experienced quite a bit of pumping in the passed, which in my opinion caused some of the fatigue on the stemball fittings. This is why I replaced the upper portion of the upper shrouds. I am hoping that with runners and inner forestay, we can keep the upper section of the mast in check. We’ll see. Although with the help of Gary, another C&C38 owner, we tuned the rig to perfection, the rod stretched and we were out of tune by the time we reached Chesapeake. I put a total of 6 turns on uppers and two on lowers. The mast is still working a bit so I might adjust the turnbuckles again. Headstay roller furling got adjusted as well. The headstay was too loose making a pretty big curve as we sailed upwind. The rake on the mast and tensioning the backstay adjuster didn’t help. I took several turns on the headstay until it got noticeably tighter. Now we get a better shape on the upwind tack.
Engine:
The poor atomic 4. I am beating it to death. No one expected a small atomic 4 to push an overloaded 38 footer. But it’s working pretty good. Be reminded that this is supercharged atomic 4 with fresh-water cooling (FWC), oil changing kit, electronic ignition, crankcase ventilation, reduction drive, new accessory drive, and new carburtor. The engine is also coping with oversized 125A alternator and three-stage regulator. I had to install a switch that cuts the alternator output in half whenever needed. I am glad I changed oil about a week before entering ICW. The waterway is brutal. We have 8-9 hour motoring sessions daily. I am having problems with explosive fumes alarm. It keeps coming on. I keep thinking it’s the gas leak that we had but its not. There is no smell of gas in the bilge. The other possible causes are propane we use for cooking, and hydrogen from led acid batteries. The last day, we did 9 hours of motoring and the alarm didn’t turn on at all. I think it was the alternator gassing up the batteries pretty good. I keep the alternator on half output and that keeps the voltage from going into 14.5-15V and prevent the batteries from gassing. The other thing that could have casue the alram was the hole on the manifold. It was supposed to have a bypass hose to the bottom of the carburator. The little copper bypass hose corroded. I plugged the carburator end, but never did it on the manifold. If this was causing the alarm to turn on then we are probably burning too much fuel. The mixture was probably too rich. So I adjusted the mixture valve after plugging the manifold hole.
The engine is starting to run hot. I think the heat exchanger is not adequate. I will look for a second one to put in series. I also have an unnecessary reduced section of pipe between the temperature control valve and heat exchanger. I will get the larger pipe to replace it. Maybe that increases the volume of antifreeze and helps keep the temperature down. At the moment the engine temperature climbs to 190F if we motor at 1500RPM. Motorsailing helps a lot. If we get wind, even 5-10 knots and motorsail, the RPMs can stay in 1500, but the temperature drops to 180F. We also pick up 1-2 knots. I check the antifreeze weekly, making sure it is toped off. I am also making sure there are no kinks in the hoses, and that all the hose clamps are tight.
Batteries:
So far so good. We have 4 trojan SCS225 130AH 12V led acid batteries and one more 120AH led acid battery all hooked up in parallel for 640AH total house bank. Plenty of juice for our needs! We have a small group 24 75AH starting battery, which is charged with echo charger. This one is the first one I thought was gassing and causing the explosive fume alarm to go on. I installed the switch to shut off the echo charger. This could have been the cause of the alarm turning on all the time. Anyhow, the batteries are due for distilled water fill up and I’ll do the in Belhaven.
Charging:
We have engine mounted Amptech 125A alternator and Xantrex three stage regulator. Besides adding the switch that cuts off the alternator output in half, I also took apart the alternator and cleaned off the dust from the belt. I retightened the belt once since it was new on October 1. We have plenty of belts and a spare 100A alternator.
Fourwinds II is a wind generator mounted at the stern pole. Its working as advertised with plenty of juice when it blows 20+. Amazing, I got reading of 15 amps few nights ago when it blew 20-25 knots. The only problem is that my supporting stays are not high enough. This causes some vibrations that need to be worked on. Because of this, at 30+ I have to shut it down, and that works ok. I wait for wind to die down and use the switch that shorts out the generator. Then I quickly climb up, turn the blades away from the wind and tie them down.
We also have to solar panels kyocera 130TM (new model). They are great. They were rated at 8.3A, but over the summer when the sun was high up we got 11-12A from each one. This is the greatest passive source of energy on earth. With no moving parts, they are very reliable. Just wipe them down and make sure nothing is there to break the glass. We keep our on top of the bimini. It survived the gale force winds in NJ and Chesapeake. Controller works ok as well.
Watermaker:
We have a home built high output watermaker what we are very VERY pleased with. All stainless CAT pump works good giving a flow 0f 1.5GPM at 800-1000PSI. All the hoses and connectors are still holding on tight. No leaks in high-pressure lines. Membranes and pressure vessels are in series and working good. I had problems with pressure gauge leaking but that was because I tightened it too much. I got a new one which works good. The only and big drawback is that the watermaker and pre-pump uses in the vicinity of 90 amps at 900psi. But we get about 30GPH product, from two SW302540 membranes. So we fill up water tanks in 2-3 hours. It was a pain to install the membranes, but they work and don’t leak. From RI to Norfolk VA, we used the dock water once in Pt Jefferson NY. Other than that, we ran the watermaker all the time in clean water. I drank the water for a month now, and I still have 1gal jugs with water made from Chesapeake Bay that I drink, cook with, and make tea and coffee. I run it and flush it every third day. I need to order some spares while I can.
Cooking/Heating:
We have two 20gal LP tanks that I mounted astern in mahagony cradle. I stitched up a sunbrella cover for it, and they are rust free. The stove is a new Seaward products’ Princess three burner with oven. It works good with no problem whatsoever. I kept the old 10gal LP tank onto which we mounted the small 1500btu heater which heats up the cabin to 80F in 15 minutes. We run it every night during and after showers.
Cold/Hot Water:
With so much engine runtime we have no problems with hot water. We take hot showers every night. 6 gallon tank lasts for both me and Crystal. She goes first just in case it runs out. I still get plenty of hot water to shower. The pressure pump works fine but we turn it on only for showers. We found out that using foot pumps saves tremendous amounts of water so we don’t have to fill up tanks as often. About a week if we don’t shower every single day.
Autopilot:
Autohelm 4000 ST. Needs lubing and maintenance. It’s getting hard to disengage it. Other than that it works fine. Can’t use it in ICW unless we are in the open bodies of water such as Abemarle and Pamlico sounds. It makes the boat follow an S shape course wondering off course too far.
Monitor Windvane really didn’t have a chance to perform yet. We’ll take a look at that in the gulf stream crossing to Bahamas.
Inverter:
Shore Power 1500W inverter works great. Crystal makes coffee every morning using out coffee maker from home. She can even plug in the curling iron. I use the heat gun to melt the heat-shrink when I do any wiring work. I used jig-saw, drill, sewing machine and other 110V equipment readily without a problem.
Sewing machine:
Ultrafeed LSZ portable sailmaking machine. Work great. We stitched up everything around the cabin. Dodger, bimini, covers for bumbers, grill, winches. We made all interior cushions and outside cockpit cushions with it. So far it has worked superb. We broke bunch of needles but that machine is indestructible. I patched up sails on deck, on three occasions.
Navigation/Radar:
Cheap JRC 1000 from Ebay! Works good. For what I know. I use it to check distances to obstacles, and never really had a chance to use it in fog. I like that I can display GPS speed and position on the radar display in the cockpit.
Navigation/Charts:
Garmain 120 external antenna, and portable handheld GPSmap 172. Works good. I soldered a serial connector so that we can display our position on the laptop. We use Offshore Navigator Electronic charting Software (thanks, Pedro!!) with NOAA downloaded raster charts on a dell Inspiron 8600 ruining windows XP (suicide). But we are not dead yet. The charts were wrong only once since Providence, RI. But that’s the time we ran aground at night in ICW. Dell hasn’t crashed wile navigating once. But it did crash while playing around with offshore navigator software. Once we get to Bahamas we are switching to paper charts. This will be a new experience for us since we are so used to computer and GPS putting us on the map automatically.
Ground tackle: We got plenty of it. Our primary 45lbs CQR is on 300feet of 5/16 BBB galvanized chain(Thanks Miles). Holds no matter what. Windlass is Lofrans Airon 1000Watt, with new gipsy. All work good. The chain never gets stuck in the gipsy or the chainpipe. The bow roller is designed for 35 lbs CQR. Using the 45lbs anchor puts on a lot of beating on the bow roller. But its holding up ok so far. I make it a point to clean the mud off, after few days. Our spare anchor is 35lbs CQR on a 100feet of 3/8 BBB chain. We also have a 25lbs danforth on 10 feet of 5/16” BBB chain. I think we still need a storm anchor. But I am not sure.
Fridge:
Our refridgiration system is from EZCold. It came with the cold plate which I installed at the deep end of the icebox. I created a plexiglass divider that separated the frozen part(freezer) from the rest. I also added a shelf in the deep part of the fridge. Since its top loading the space is not utilized extremely well but we manage to have eggs, milk, fruits and vegetables and all other ordinary houshold items, just in smaller quantities. The compressor is Danfoss BD50 that has air and water cooling. The waterpump definately needed a strainer at the intake since any crumbs in the line will clogg it and the cooling water will not flow. The energy usage is pretty good. I cannot estimate exactly how much that is but I do know that with our energy production we have no problem keeping the freezer portion completely frozen. I have added a significant portiuon of insulation styrofoam to keep engine heat away from the freezer box. It payed off tremendeously as the hours of compressor runtime dropped by about a third from last year to this year.
posted by sundowner-cruise at 10:32 AM
1 comments
