Bestevaer 49ST

[Tillsbury]

By the way noelex, I think you need to change your avatar title

[Kenomac]

With a reliable Spectra low energy consumption watermaker onboard like the OP is planning to purchase, why would one even bother with rainwater catchment? Just run the thing for an hour or two per day and you’ll always have plenty of water... no conservation measures or pickling necessary. Geez, ours makes 60 gallons per hour; water useage and conservation is pretty low on our list of concerns.

Just flip a switch once a day.

[john61ct]

Originally Posted by Kenomac

ours makes 60 gallons per hour

which unit is that? PM if you like

[JPA Cate]

As long as one washes and rinses the deck beforehand, the rain water caught is entirely okay to drink. Noelex will want to filter his carefully, because one can't use bleach in aluminum tanks to kill possible bacteria. We used to use bleach (1T: 10 gallons), and a charcoal filter to take out the chlorine taste. The water tasted fine, we did not ever get sick from the tank water on that boat (the one before this one).

If a yachtie depends on a watermaker for 10 gal/day or more, and the watermaker breaks down, one can only hope they have some kind of backup for the watermaker if they go to undeveloped areas, lacking in services. May not be a problem for someone in populous areas.

Ann

[Kenomac]

Originally Posted by john61ct

which unit is that? PM if you like

Originally Posted by JPA Cate

As long as one washes and rinses the deck beforehand, the rain water caught is entirely okay to drink. Noelex will want to filter his carefully, because one can't use bleach in aluminum tanks to kill possible bacteria. We used to use bleach (1T: 10 gallons), and a charcoal filter to take out the chlorine taste. The water tasted fine, we did not ever get sick from the tank water on that boat (the one before this one).

If a yachtie depends on a watermaker for 10 gal/day or more, and the watermaker breaks down, one can only hope they have some kind of backup for the watermaker if they go to undeveloped areas, lacking in services. May not be a problem for someone in populous areas.

Ann

We have a Spectra Newport 1000mK 2 and a Spectra 380c. 60 gallons per hour plus added redundancy by having two units. Tanks will hold 400 gallons.

[john61ct]

Sweet. Can both run off DC? Any idea of AH / hour or /gal?

[mitiempo]

The Newport 1000 mK2 uses 28 amps @ 24 volts for 41 US gallons/hour.

The 380C, an older model, produces about 15 US gallons, using about 21 amps on a 12 volt system, not sure about 24 volts but probably about 10 - 11 amps.

[LargeMarge]

Dedicated batteries for cockpit electronics.

If everything else goes toes-up, you still have your tunes.

[noelex 77]

Wireless anchor winch remote.

This is something I have added myself.

On our previous boat I used one of the very popular eBay wireless remote controls. These are incredibly cheap at only about $20 (or less) and most people report great success with these units.

However, I found they were less than reliable. I don’t know if they did not last long simply because we anchor almost 365 days a year, or if the switching mechanism could not cope with the higher current of the solenoid on our larger than typical anchor winch, or perhaps I was just unlucky, but I had several units fail and gave up in the end.

There were also some other minor shortcomings. Even a very brief short button press would operate the windlass for long enough to pull up a foot of chain. Not ideal when trying to “park” the anchor, or flip the anchor on the bow roller. The batteries for the remote were also an unsual size, hard to find, and expensive. Finally the range was a little poor if the receiver was installed under the deck (this is on an aluminium boat, which acts as a Faraday cage).

There are some (presumably better) proper marine wireless remotes, but with wired remotes I have found the industrial crane switches more reliable than marine units. A quick seach showed some wireless industrial crane remotes, so this is what I installed.

The unit was about $120 USD.

Initial impressions are very favourable. A short button press only retrieves a few links of chain. It will work anywhere on the boat even though I have installed the receiver below decks in a nice dry space. It takes normal AA batteries.

The big test will be if the durability and reliability are OK. The unit is obviously much more rugged and better built than the cheaper remotes, although the build quality would best be described as OK rather than a premium, quality product.

The smallest unit I could find has several channels. I suspect I will keep it simple and use this unit just for the anchor winch, but the same remote could also be used to control the bow thruster and even other functions such as deck lights.

Edit:
Sorry, the photo of the controller is not loading correctly. I will post the photo when the internet signal is better.

[SailRedemption]

If it's like the ones I have been looking at, I'm glad to hear you took the leap. I found some that had 4 buttons, others were 6-10. They are marketed for overhead cranes that go east-west, north-south, up-down, etc. Definitely "look" more heavy duty than the online offroad winch remotes.

[noelex 77]

The controller:

[sy_iris]

Definitely a good find. would you care to share the link for the controller and the wired receiver?

[noelex 77]

Originally Posted by sy_iris

Definitely a good find. would you care to share the link for the controller and the wired receiver?

The unit is manufactured by Telecrane.

The receiver model was F21-E1 RX and the transmitter model F21-E1 TX.

Be careful when ordering, the receiver should be powered by the boat supply and is manufactured in several voltages (the transmitter is powered two AA batteries). So the receiver needs to be the 12v (or perhaps the 24v) dc model. This is industrial, not boat, equipment so some of the otherwise identical units are designed for mains ac voltage.

I am in Europe and it was purchased from Amazon UK (both the receiver and transmitter are sold together). Mine is the 24v model most boats will need the 12v model:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

[sy_iris]

Thank you for taking the trouble. I am also sailing an alu vessel and hate the thought of drilling holes in a water tight construction to add electric cables for a foot control. Today I use a "china" remote which works well, but far far away from ruggedised.

[noelex 77]

The other modification that I hope will be useful is to attach an old mobile phone to the back of the remote. The chartplotter output can be displayed by the phone via wifi. This means while at the bow the person dropping the anchor has access to depth, charts, and even a fish finder display (to make sure they don’t drop the anchor on an isolated rock or old mooring block) and radar (to check the distance from shore or other boats).

Isn’t technology wonderful .

My old phone has a rather poor resolution display and a small screen, which will limit the usefulness of the information, but I expect as I update my phone the older models will relegated to anchor winch duty.

The winch control comes with a clear plastic cover designed to make it rainproof and the phone neatly slips under this cover.

( will load a photo showing the phone display when possible)