Bestevaer 49ST

[kmacdonald]

What are you doing for refrigeration? Freezer?

[noelex 77]

Originally Posted by kmacdonald

What are you doing for refrigeration? Freezer?

Fridge:

Fridge problems are unfortunately common on long distance cruising boats and together with generator troubles are a frequent reason for sitting in port awaiting repairs. This is something we want to avoid as much as possible. Some sailors even supplement their cruising budget by carrying the equipment and having the expertise to repair fridge problems. They comment that in busy anchorages there is always at least one boat with fridge problems.

To be fair, fridge systems seem to have become more reliable in the last decade, but for a boat like ours that rarely ties up, fridge system repair is often not a DIY proposition and can be a real nuisance.

Our solution is to use self contained “car fridges”. There are many manufacturers of these products such as the common Engle and Waeco models. There are also small specialised companies such as Norcoast. They are designed for four wheel drive applications. This is one of few uses that is more severe than boating. Vibration and high internal car temperatures are expected. Warm beer is major crisis . On 4WD forums the topic of which fridge is the best causes more angst than anchor discussions on sailing forums . Consequently, the fridge companies live and die by their reputation for reliability. As 4WDs have at most a single 80 AHr house bank, low power consumption is also a key requirement.

The major advantage, compared to typical boat fridge systems, is that they are self contained and cheap enough to be disposable. So if they break down you throw them away and buy another model. If you do want to repair the unit, it can be taken ashore and left with a technician while you continue cruising.

Many yachts use these fridges , typically sitting on bench, which works well but starting from scratch we could adopt a more “built in” approach, with sensible ducting to draw in cold bilge air and for the hot air to escape. So we specified an under bench area of the kitchen where the “car fridge” could be used but would be recessed and function like a normal boat fridge. We wanted an area that could comfortably hold a number of different models of fridge, so we not limited to one brand or model in the event replacement was needed. In practice, this is not difficult as extra room can be used for additional insulation, or food or drink storage to replenish the fridge. There are many brands of a roughly similar size.

I think eventually we will install a second car fridge in the technical area to provide redundancy and to function as a freezer. The car fridges can be used as a fridge or a freezer depending on the setting and some of the larger models can do both at the same time.

The area in the galley is designed to accomodate multiple sized units. We have a stainless steel National Luna model. It sits under the Bubinga bench top and is configured so that when the wooden bench top is lifted the fridge lid also lifts. At the moment this coupling of lids is a dyneema loop which was initially only temporary, but this simple solution is actually working well.

The compressor draws air directly from the bilge (I will probably install a small computer fan for tropical conditions) and there is plenty of room for extra insulation, although the unit is power efficient as it is.

The limitation of this approach is that the fridge area is reasonably small: 40 litres with one unit or 80 litres with two. This smaller size helps reduce power consumption and having cruised for many years on smaller boats without refrigeration, techniques for preserving food without refrigeration are not unusual for us. This helps provide plenty of volume for the all important cold drinks at sundown .

So our fridge solution is not for everyone, but is an option worth considering if simple and reliable are high on your priority list.

This photo shows the bench lid closed and open:

[olaf hart]

We pulled the same stunt with a Waeco fridge, and reinstalled the icebox with extra insulation. Ours in under a dinette seat.

Cruising we mainly use the smaller waeco as a freezer, and freeze ice packs when the engine is running, then the ice packs go into the icebox.

We use it as a fridge for daysails.


We also ducted an air supply from the bilge, read somewhere this was almost as efficient as using a water cooled condenser, as the bilge air is generally at water temperature.

You might want to try one of those efficient portable ice chests before going to a second fridge...

[packeteer]

yep, I have a 50L fridge in my 4wd. It runs off a 100Ah AGM battery.

Great unit that draws about 2 amps an hour. I've had it run for 5 days in cooler weather

[kmacdonald]

noelex77, I really like the idea of portable fridge. Your new boat build is incredible. The careful attention to detail and quest for simplicity and reliability speaks volumes of your experience. You must be having the time of your life. Most impressive build I've ever followed by a large margin. More pictures please.

[Suijin]

For chain marking I just weave a few strands of yellow polypropylene rope into the links for 3-4 links. Stays put and goes right through the gypsy. One mark at 50’, two at 100’ etc.

[darylat8750]

Originally Posted by Suijin

For chain marking I just weave a few strands of yellow polypropylene rope into the links for 3-4 links. Stays put and goes right through the gypsy. One mark at 50’, two at 100’ etc.

That is my current method but in muddy bottoms it take a while longer to get the mud off and if I don't clean it it gets harder to see from the helm.

[s/v Jedi]

Originally Posted by Suijin

For chain marking I just weave a few strands of yellow polypropylene rope into the links for 3-4 links. Stays put and goes right through the gypsy. One mark at 50’, two at 100’ etc.

I just tie footlong pieces of string to my chain: 1st at 60’ then 2 at 120’ etc. Even though these pieces of string just hang loose this has worked 100% over the 10+ years that we’ve been doing it.

Anything with colors doesn’t work for the areas we cruise because it all comes up as one same color until you clean it. Much easier to count how many strings are tied to the chain

[noelex 77]

Fuel:

Here you can see the Walbro fuel polishing and transfer pumps. The transfer pump’s main job is to deliver fuel to the day tank, but it can also be used to move fuel between the two main diesel tanks.

The fuel polishing and fuel transfer pumps are the same: Walbro FRB -23 pumps.

This helps redundancy. Only one spare is needed. If no spare is available, if the transfer pump fails it can be quickly swapped for the less important polishing pump.

The principle of keeping components the same where possible has been followed throughout the boat. So, for example, the manual bilge pumps are identical to the Lavac toilet pump.

The polishing system has a pick up at the very bottom of the tank and then runs to its own seperate Racor 900 filter, before returning to the tank. There is a seperate Racor 900 filter that feeds the day tank and from here it is gravity fed to has another Racor 900 filter and the engine. Did someone mention clean fuel is important ? If there is a problem with the day tank, the engine can be fed from one of the two main fuel tanks.

Unfortunately, fuel pumps can be reasonably noisy. A good solution to reduce the noise is to mount them on a seperate board isolated from the structure with a soft mounting system. Before doing this, with all pumps consider if the noise is perhaps helpful to identify when the pump is running.

However, for pumps such as the polishing system that is often run for many hours, reducing noise is important. I left out details of isolation from the specifications, as it is something that easy to add and I planned on installing this for the watermaker pumps, which I am fitting myself.

I was pleasantly surprised to see KM have already installed an isolation system. Small details like this show the builder cares about the end product.

[JPA Cate]

Good on KM, noelex! Looks good, but you already know that!

[Pelagic]

Great Fuel Management System Noelex, almost to the Dutch Feadship standard, (just missing the centrifuges [emoji4] )

I put an almost identical system on Stargazer with a seperate 900 for polishing and transfer. (No high Day Tank but the center tank is my clean tank)

Being a refit, I just used the sediment drains at the bottoms of each tank as my pickups.

One dilemma I had was in how closely to match the flow rate of the polishing/transfer pump with the flow rate of the Racor 900.

As I wanted maximum agitation pressure inside each tank at the pipe ends at tank bottoms, the pump has I think double capacity, drawing fuel thru the 900.

How does yours match?

[noelex 77]

Originally Posted by Pelagic

How does yours match?

Our old boat had only a very small polishing pump with a large filter and the system worked well.

There is a view that for the “turbine” system of the Racor to work, there needs to be a reasonable fuel flow to produce the swirling action. Others have a different view and believe that a low fuel flow actually provides better filtration and water separation.

I am no expert on filtration systems, but before installing the system on our last boat I did some research and came to the conclusion that the “low fuel rate is better” view is probably more accurate, although in reality it seems to make little difference.

The big advantage of a large filter (such as the Racor 900) is that it takes much longer to clog (I think from memory something like 5 times longer than the Racor 500). This large capacity is most helpful in the filter that supplies the main engine. I have seen diesel filters that clogged and needed replacing within 5 minutes on a boat with a diesel bug problem. A large filter at least gives extra time.

For the polishing system, a clogged filter is less of an immediate problem, but keeping all the filters the same is helpful. So we have three Racor 900 filters.

Then there is issue of tank agitation. For polishing to work optimally, the tank contents should be stirred up. A temporary fuel polishing system can do this by installing a large pump and moving the pump discharge around the tank. However, these system are only run for a few hours every year or couple of years. Permanent fuel polishing is different. It may run for several hours every day and these systems do not typically have a pump large enough to stir up the tank contents, or a means of moving the discharge around the tank. Fortunately, sailing is an excellent means of agitating the tank contents, and combined with using the system regularly I think a permanent fuel polishing system is a great help in keeping your fuel and tank clean. We make sure we always run the polishing system when sailing. We also operate the system for a couple of hours most days at anchor. I am not sure it does much good without agitation, but when we have excess solar power the system may as well be on. The pump is rated for an 18,000 hour life.

The Walbro fuel pump is rated at 162 litres/hour so it will not do any agitation on its own.

[Pelagic]

Originally Posted by noelex 77

The Walbro fuel pump is rated at 162 litres/hour so it will not do any agitation on its own.

I have a priming pump that is rated at about the same as your Walbro, but I found it too slow for emptying my 2,500 liter capacity

So I went bigger with the polishing pump so I could empty or transfer fuel if severely contaminated with bacteria.

The Gear puppy I chose for polishing, has an output of 24 liters/minute or 1,440 l/h and with 16mm bore hose and piping to the bottom of each tank it would process or drain my 3 tanks in 2 hrs.

It will be interesting to see how much the Racor 900 with only a flow rate of 340 l/h restricts its performance.[emoji4]

[daletournier]

I just purchased one of the above Walbro pumps as it was the only pump I could find that I considered a good match for the Racor 500 both in volume and lift (for my application).

I thought the two combined make a reasonably priced and adequate polishing system.

[HR42]

Originally Posted by Seaworthy Lass

I remember reading a thread discussing clothes in general for high latitude sailing. I will have to go and find that again.

At the moment, my gear is:
- Henri Lloyd Shadow sailing boots
- NZ possum/merino socks, hat and gloves
- Icebreaker merino thermal underwear (brilliant stuff, I am living in that now without anything added)
- Some old merino jumpers
- A Patagonia down jacket (used most of last winter, I love it)
- Musto MPX jacket (I had an HPX before, but with a pilothouse it was strongly suggested that this wasn't needed) and old Kathmandu goretex jacket
- Old Musto and Kathmandu goretex pants (freshly washed and waterproofed)
- Old synthetic balaclava

I am lacking decent gloves. Neoprene may be a good option, but I will chase up that old thread and see what was recommended. Any suggestions appreciated.

SWL

In regards to gloves, the ultimate for warmth I've found to me is polartec gloves with a large sized heavy duty rubber gloves over the top, all long sleeved. Not terribly good for doing fine work as you can imagine. I read about this solution in the Italians book about sailing in Patagonia and tried it there recently.