Quote:
Originally Posted by smcauley440
Hey thanks for sharing the information and story! I will do that with the shock cord and also check the size of the power supply wire. That makes sense my buddy has or rather had a Oceanis 461, (got wiped out by hurricane Igor in Bermuda) with the same problem. We increased the size of the wire and it solved his problem. Sad the boats gone though! We had a blast getting to Bemuda!
Love to hear how great the 440 really is! That experience you had makes me even more confident that we made the right purchase! We chartered the 440, our first time, in the BVI two years ago and had a tropical storm for three days. The wind was 40 plus and from the north west so we had big seas on the North side with plenty of wind to push us around but the 440 was so stable! Absolutely loved how she handled. Only problem was that we were at our next stopover point to quickly so we ended up just sailing back and forth along the coast just for the love of it!
We were so sold on this model we bought our boat sight unseen over the internet through a German broker! My lawyer wanted to check me into the nut house! But it all turned out great for us so there are still good people in this world, at least in the sailing community! The boat is in better shape than we expected! The previous owner had left all kinds of stuff on board, tools, spare parts, etc. It was like Christmas everytime we opened a hatch!
Sounds like you are planning a hugh adventure! How exciting and wish we were there also but not yet! Although now that we are home we just want to get back on board! Our plan is to move west through the med next spring and then plan to do the ARC 2011
to get us south.
If you don't mind a few more questions:
Do you have folding Props? Water maker? What are your thoughts about SSB or Sat phone for communication or email internet stuff?
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It just goes to show that it is sometimes better to buy a previously owned vessel because there are always extras that from personal experience I have realised add up very quickly.
It sounds like you have already had fantastic sail time on your
Lagoon
Yes, we are planning quite a big adventure and having owned a
Catana 471 before, we really felt we needed a 'home' for this journey, and that's what we found in the Lagoon 440. We have really been impressed at how close to the wind she
sails, especially without
dagger boards. I think quite a few Mono
hull sailors in
Cape Town have been surprised that we got closer to the wind than they could, so it has inspired a lot of debate here.
Folding Props: No we literally have the old cheapies - two blade 17 x 17 with the upgraded
Yanmar 55HP and SD 50 sail drives - we get about 9 knts out of them at a push. We want to put on folding props just before leaving here, and thankfully so as my one prop was damaged by welding activity on the vessel next door last week. You can see the discussion I had on the Antifouling prop thread.
Water Maker: I would like to put a 300ltr/hr unit on the
Yanmar engines, but already run the Balmars on these and dont want to damage the
motor by too many attachments which could damage the crankshaft. We are fitting a
cheap unit (R 30000.00 +- $4200) which runs on 220v and produces aprox 150 ltrs/hr of water per hr from Aquamarine in Cape Town. This is NOT the unit we are going to have long term - we are going to get a 12v unit overseas once we have left as they are a lot cheaper than here (import duties etc) and run on about 9 amps. So this 220v system will become our 'back up system. Of course it will always be useful as whenever we run the genset we will invariably also run the water maker.
We have an Onan 7kva genset, two 150amp Balmars on the Yanmars together with the original Hitachi 80amps on each
motor. We have ordered 5
solar panels from the states - kyocera's, are NOT going to do the wind chargers, fitting two
Victron 220v 120 amp chargers 3000watt inverters, currently have a Gel
battery bank 1680 amp hrs. Our Lagoon did not have the LED's so we have converted EVERYTHING to LED. The two 150amp Balmars are seriously
FANTASTIC as they are wired through a smart charge
regulator / centerfielder system.
We do not want to battle with power or hot water showers - Since my woman is willing to share my dream, I make it my point to see she is comfortable!!!
We do not have the SSB installed yet but DEFINATELY are going to install the
ICOM SSB. We have an
Iridium Sat phone on board with an external Aerial for better
reception - it really works well but remains expensive when downloading on the net. We have been doing a lot of
research on 'being online' while at sea due to the fact that I will have some business to keep in touch with whilst Im gone, including a resort on my farm in Stellenbosch - no getting away from it - it is HUGELY expensive. We have been looking into the SAILOR 250 FLEETBROADBAND and Tracphone V7, but I think it's crazy spending that sort of
money. I have heard rumours in SA that they are on the brink of releasing a much better priced option now (at normal
cell phone rates, but apparently there are heavy negotiations around this and the timing cant be predicted). I think SSB sailmail is the way to go at the moment - On the
Iridium all sms texting is free of charge which is really nice for keeping intouch with
family and visa versa.
I think between the Iridium, SSB and High powered booster for reaching internet servers when nearer the shoreline is the way we are going to go for now.
We are also doing a lot of
research on 'security on board'. We have not reached any conclusions yet and am reading a lot about peoples unfortunate experiences with 'pirates / rascall fishermen' out there. Although we hope to sail in areas that do not require these measures, we would rather be prepared for the worst.
Hopefully we catch up with you guys some day on the big deep blue