Now that interest has been established on this thread, I'll pass on a little about our Belize:
Hull number 110, Owner's version
Finished building July 2003
Delivered by freighter to
Vancouver, BC
Outfitted by Emerald Harbor
Marine,
Seattle:
Icom VHF,
Furuno Radar/chart plotter, 110VAC
wiring,
Cruise Air
air conditioning,
Northern Lights 6KW
generator, Spectra
Catalina watermaker
Owner (me) installed: Skymate e-mail system,
Icom 718
SSB, Bose Media Center, Flat
screen TV, Four 130 Watt
Kyocera solar panels with Outback MX 60
MPPT charge controller
Dinghy is Caribe C-10X with Yamaha 15 hp two stroke
engine
John and Jules,
Thanks for
posting to this thread.
As I
recall the steering mechanism uses a Spectra line that is supposed to be inspected and tensioned annually. I have not found any significant wear on ours yet but will definitely inspect a little closer next time. Did you replace the plastic pulleys when you put in the
steel cable? How did the auxiliary tiller
work?
Lucky,
Thanks for
posting to this thread as well.
We also had some condensation issues during our winters in
Seattle. The starboard
shroud chain plate was covered by a small piece of
wood below the false ceiling. Condensation on that component ran down the
hull and caused an unsightly stain on the bulkhead all the way to the deck through the hanging locker. I put a small plastic
storage container in the little niche behind the
wood to catch the
water before it dripped down the bulkhead to solve that issue. Apparently any condensation caught in the container evaporates before causing a problem.
Leakage through the sliding door rail remains a problem with our boat as well. Fortunately our
bimini arrangement has all but stopped rain from being a problem. On the rare occasion that I spray too much water on the door while
washing, I just wipe up the drips with a rag.
I wish I had a nickel (5 U.S. cents) for every time my wife has complained about the
refrigerator. She hates having to sit on the
cabin floor and unload everything to get something out from the back. Our configuration has no hole between the freezer and
refrigerator. Identical
Isotherm compressors cool both boxes separately so
battery drain is not a major problem, especially now that we have added closed cell foam
insulation around the insides and bottom of the freezer. (One time we noticed blood leaking from the freezer into the refrigerator coming from some meat we had put on the bottom of the freezer several days earlier. Upon investigating we discovered unfrozen meat in the bottom several inches of the freezer.) We cut up an extra foam cushion for the
cockpit seats and a foam body board from Wal-Mart in
Mexico for the insulation.
My wife wants to cut our saloon table down and lower it to make a coffee table. We saw a sister ship,
Rapscullion, in
La Paz,
Mexico, with a cut down table so she has decided she wants a similar setup. I have resisted cutting up the beautiful wood table but may eventually have to give in to her desires.
One data point about the Belize handling: As I mentioned above Emerald Harbor Marine in Seattle, WA, outfitted our boat. Just before doing ours they had carte blanche to outfit an FP
Marquesas 56 for a retired doctor. They spared no expense and really did her up well. Interestingly the two EHM workers who went out on sea trials with me to align the
radar commented that our boat sailed much better than the
Marquesas did. We saw 9.5 knots with 19 knots of
wind on the beam in
Puget Sound. Of course then we started loading her down and now we're lucky to 7.5 knots in similar conditions.
One of my biggest complaints about the boat is that I must remove the switch panel for the port
engine to check the start
battery electrolyte level. The other big complaint is having to
haul out to change sail drive
oil, which is discussed at length in the Engines and
Propulsion Systems (forum
http://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/f54/) and Propellers & Drive Systems forum (
http://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/f114/).
Anyone had a propellor fall off? We
lost our port
propeller in
Costa Rica and had to limp all the way to
Panama to get and install a new one.
Anchoring is tricky with only one
propeller and
mooring to a
dock or getting underway with only one is also a bit tricky, especially with a cross
wind. This is also discussed at length in thread
Prop Fell OFF! Help (
http://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/...elp-15371.html)
We are on our second set of house
batteries now. We chose to use 6 golf cart batteries in series parallel because we could find them in Manzanillo, Mexico, when the original Hoppeke 12 volt set died after 3.5 years.
To read our cruise log, visit:
Log of Yachtsman's Dream.
Looking forward to sharing much more on this thread.