450: Purchasing and Commissioning

[D&D]

Originally Posted by roetter

Here is a video of the lagoon 450 cockpit in the rain.

Oh dear...that does make the L440 look good!

[gonzemoi]

Originally Posted by roetter

Who has experience with the square top main? I am still going back and forth on this topic.

Is it worth it?

Hi Rolf,

Any new thoughts with square top main after your 2 week trial?

Thanks,

Gonzalo

[roetter]

Gonzalo

My decision stands - the regular sail. The top of the main never looked good.
When reefed it looked even worse, as the top batten would slide back from the mast. Only when fully raised, will the gadget at the top pull the top batten towards the mast.

[gonzemoi]

Thanks for the feedback..

[D&D]

Originally Posted by gonzemoi

Any new thoughts with square top main

FWIW from our Post #62 in this thread...

"Square-top main? Brilliant...and no hassles whatsoever. We sailed CatNirvana from the Med to Syd (~14000nm) and have been doing coastal cruising here. I say again for the sceptics...NO HASSLES WHATSOEVER! The only time we need to climb up the lower mast steps is to grab and then secure the main halyard to the boom, to stop it flapping and snapping. The (factory setup) release for the top batten works fine, every time, and there's great light-air performance. We tend to sail a lot single-reefed, perhaps because the square-top results in too much sail area fairly quickly as the breeze stiffens, but when it's really light the square-top is much appreciated...NO DIESELS!"

[roetter]

Originally Posted by D&D

FWIW from our Post #62 in this thread...

"Square-top main? Brilliant...and no hassles whatsoever. We sailed CatNirvana from the Med to Syd (~14000nm) and have been doing coastal cruising here. I say again for the sceptics...NO HASSLES WHATSOEVER! The only time we need to climb up the lower mast steps is to grab and then secure the main halyard to the boom, to stop it flapping and snapping. The (factory setup) release for the top batten works fine, every time, and there's great light-air performance. We tend to sail a lot single-reefed, perhaps because the square-top results in too much sail area fairly quickly as the breeze stiffens, but when it's really light the square-top is much appreciated...NO DIESELS!"

I think you can see from the picture that the main looks ugly. The bottom is shaped for very light air with lots of draft while the top is perfectly flat for a 50 knot storm. That is not an acceptable shape. Maybe your requirements for a good sail shape are different from mine. We have never been able to get any kind of draft into the tope area of the main. It might as well not be there then.
Rolf

[D&D]

Originally Posted by roetter

the main looks ugly...We have never been able to get any kind of draft into the tope area of the main.

What's "ugly" to one may not be so to another. Each to his/her own. We kinda like the square-top for looks as well, although we admit to some prejudice.

As for draft at the mainsail top, all we can say is that the telltales up there perform and respond perfectly...and she sails well in light air.

We can't comment on the rig in 50kn as that may be a bit more than our meager 14000nm on the log have seen. We were in the high 40's several times (during which on one occassion we logged CatNiirvana's highest speed @21kn surfing with a rag of genoa only) but the instruments never recorded wind >50kn.

[gonzemoi]

Originally Posted by roetter

Generator and Inverter:
My objective is to have a generator as small as possible, as in most cases we will not be using many power hungry gadgets. And just for charging a large generator will never be loaded enough to prevent bore glazing. Also we will save weight. With a 5 kW generator, using a 200A charger in the Victron 5000 will use just under 3kW at full load. There is probably only a short time that the batteries will actually accept this kind of charge current.

The inverter will be a Victron Quattro 5000 W (or maybe 3000 W – still considering). These inverters have two neat features:

1- Power Control - You program a maximum power for shore and generator independently. Once the inverter senses that this power is reached, it will throttle back the charger to not overload the generator or shore supply.

2- Power assist- Once the charger does not charge anymore (Power Control at 100%) AND the power demand is still higher than programmes, it will kick in the inverter and support the generator or shore power, matching the frequency and phase.

Of course, this only makes sense if the high power demand is for a short period of time. But it is very good if you just need the micro wave for a minute.

Together the generator and the Inverter can supply up to 10kW (about 8kW continuous load), but about 15kW short peak load.

Let me know if I made a mistake in my thinking process.

Air Conditioning
The AC units are individual Dometic Cruise Air Turbo 8k BTU. Each unit uses just under 1 kW for cooling. A little more for heating.. There are 5 of these AC units on board. I am not planning to use them all at the same time, unless on shore power. The 5kW generator should be easily able to handle 2 or 3 of the AC units at a time and still have some left over for charging. Any AC motor start-up rush current ( which will be 1 second or less) can be easily supplied by the inverter assist kicking in. Hopefully, the AC units will also be cycling on and off are the initial cool down period, leaving more power for charging.

As long as the AC units are not on when the coffee maker, micro wave, or hair dryer are running, it should be fine. I might have to put in a switch that either AC’s or the ‘others’ can only be used.

.

Hi Rolf,

Reading the Victron test reports, I noticed that they recommend setting the Powercontrol Input AC at 70% of max rated output of the generator. So in your case 5KW would yield 3.5kw on a continuous basis.. the dometic AC units will consume 1.3kw when cooling and 1.9 when heating..
Hence if you run 2 AC units you will be consuming all the output from the generator and switch on the power assist, consuming the balance from the batteries.. If you plan to use AC for cool or heat for more than a 2-3hours a time, the 5kw generator seems limited without including the rest of the boat consumtion. Are my calculations correct?? Thanks..

[roetter]

Originally Posted by gonzemoi

Hi Rolf,

Reading the Victron test reports, I noticed that they recommend setting the Powercontrol Input AC at 70% of max rated output of the generator. So in your case 5KW would yield 3.5kw on a continuous basis.. the dometic AC units will consume 1.3kw when cooling and 1.9 when heating..
Hence if you run 2 AC units you will be consuming all the output from the generator and switch on the power assist, consuming the balance from the batteries.. If you plan to use AC for cool or heat for more than a 2-3hours a time, the 5kw generator seems limited without including the rest of the boat consumtion. Are my calculations correct?? Thanks..

Hi Gonzalo
The 8K BTU Dometic Turbo (in the cabins) uses 0.88kW at full load cool and 1.08kW at full heat. so you would be able to run 3 units on heat and 4 units on cool.

I assume the salon has either a single 16k BTU unit or two 8k BTU units.
So the numbers are a little better. I assume Victron is saying to limit the generator to 70% to make it more appealing to get the power assist inverter.
Wikipedia says to run a generator at least at 60-75%. if you have low load times then you have to bring her up to full or near full loads.
I quote:
"Diesel engines can suffer damage as a result of misapplication or misuse - namely internal glazing (occasionally referred to as bore glazing or piling) and carbon buildup. This is a common problem in generator sets caused by failure to follow application and operating guidelines. Ideally, diesel engines should be run at least 60-75% of their maximum rated load. Short periods of low load running are permissible providing the set is brought up to full load, or close to full load on a regular basis."

So I would set my Multi to kick in at 90%. Remember, that these loads will not be often reached.

At 90% you will have 4.5kW available. That means you can run two 8K cabins units and the 16K salon unit without kicking the Multi into assist mode in.

I would also recommend to set the tair-con thermostat relatively high. We just spent 2 weeks in the south Caribbean and had no air-con on the boat. A few nights it was too hot. But the boat had no fans. Just some simple fans would have made a big difference in comfort.
My plan for most cases is to cool the cabins down as you go to bed or just before. I do not expect more than 1 to 1.5 hours of run time. The thermostat would probably just be set to a maximum of 5 degrees below outside temperature. Thus after 30 minutes I expect the units to start cycling of and on. Even though the air-cons are switched on they are unlikely to all be running the compressor at the same time after the initial cooling period.

Rolf

[roetter]

The generator on the L450 we chartered was a Fisher Panda 4000i. This model has a DC generator that is driven by a diesel running about 3300RPM. The AC current is made by the inverter. The generator is quite small and was installed way back in the usual generator locker fwd to the starboard side of the bow sitting area.
The installation left about 70% of the locker space available for storage. The owner has an asymmetrical spinnaker on a furler stowed in the locker, as well as three wooden folding chairs and some other tidbits.

The video shows the locker and generator with all extra stuff removed.

Lagoon 450 generator space - YouTube

The Lagoon option of the larger Onan genset uses 100% of the available space.

I crawled inside and measured the size of the locker. I made a drawing of it with plan and side view. Into these I placed space holder rectangles that represent the sizes of the Northern Lights 5/6kW and the 7/9kW. (The lower kW ratings are at 50Hz the higher ones at 60Hz.)


As you can see, both units will fit in there rotated 90 degrees well in the back of the locker, leaving the forward available. We plan to store two folding bikes here. The Northern Lights generator enclosure has a removable panel on one side for the maintenance, so it should not be a problem to place either unit in there the way shown. For the larger generator, the starter battery could be moved to the center locker, which is really deep and the lower space hard to access for storage.
Rolf

[roetter]

How sturdy does the solar panel frame need to be?

Weight savings are always welcome on a catamaran. It is easy to over load it. The Lagoons are pretty good for allowable extra load, but the lighter the faster.

Many frames on boats I have seen appear to be able to withstand lifting the boat by them. I looked up professional equipment suppliers for solar panel installations on land. The installations appear to be just there to hold the panels attached, but give next to no extra rigidity to the panels. On a boat you will have more dynamic loads going through the waves though. I checked out the 120 watt panel I have sitting in the garage. The aluminium frame is very sturdy, even against torsion. So dealing with the attachment loads to the boat appear to be the major concern, not making the panels more rigid.

This is what I am considering now:
5x 180W Kyocera panels connected together at the long ends.
I will bolt the frames together by putting 3 or 4 stainless screws and nuts through them along the length of the frame.
Along the forward and aft end I will bolt (2 screws and nuts per frame) an aluminum angle bar against the 5 frames to deal with transferring the attachment loads.
To the angle bar I will attach the hinges (2 forward, 2 aft) for attachment to the cockpit roof and the poles going down to the davits.

Does anybody have experience with this? What do you guys thinks?

Rolf

[roetter]

We were 4 people on board.
No air-con, no fans, rarely music playing.
We had 3 iPhones, 2 iPads, 2 MacBook Airs to charge most nights.
Most of the energy was consumed by the two standard fridges.
Some by the water pressure pump.
The LED lights consume very little. I believe I saw on the battery monitor a difference of 1 amp between all LED lights in the salon and cockpit on or off. So they would contribute less than 10 Ah's in a 24 hour period.

Over night (12 hours) we used about 8% of the 840 Ah battery capacity (70Ahs). That is very little.

During sailing the biggest consumer will be the chart plotter and the auto pilot.
I would estimate during crossings that the 70Ah for 12 hours over night should be multiplied times 3 (210 Ah) maybe 4 (280Ah).for 24 hours.

With the 900 watt solar panel that I am planning to install, I think I should get about 220 Ahs per day (2/3 of maximum output for 5 hours). So for regular days without air-con or any other high energy consumers (washing machine, coffee maker) the solar panels should be almost enough.

Without running the water maker (26 Ah for 50 liters) I should be able to run the generator maybe every 4-5 days.

Unfortunately, when we left the charter base the batteries were down to less than 20% charge (very bad). I don't know if the owner brought the boat back empty. Over night somebody tripped over our shore plug in and unplugged the shore power. In the morning we were at 20% charge.
I tried to charge with the generator, but initially thought the generator was not working. I did no realize that it takes about 20 seconds after start for the generator to stabilize and actually output power. Then the Multi thinks about it for another 10 seconds before switching it through to the panel. With all the red warning lights on the Multi (Low battery, Over load) I thought something was not working, so initially I switched the generator back off before it had a chance to kick in. We just used engine power to pamper the batteries up slowly. But the winds were too good to have the engine running. Then I figured out the generator and Multi and did a good 4-hour charge at 100 amps to get us over 60% capacity. After that our motoring (we had some low wind and head wind situations) made it all the way up to 100% capacity.

Rolf

[roetter]

Is anybody following the progress of the ARC that started 10 days ago?

World Cruising Club Arc fleet viewer

Since we are already signed up for next years ARC with our 450 we are following it closely. Unfortunately there are no 450's in it this year. Some 440's though and three 560's. Amazing to see that a 560 is leading (on corrected time), but is also third closest to the finish. This is great, considering that the other two boats ahead are a Gunboat 66 and a Barreau 71. This means the 560 really sails well. A second 560 is not too far behind, next to a Privilleg 745.
A 440 is second on corrected time and in the front of the pack.

I hope we can show how well the 450 performs in the ARC 2012.

Rolf

[careka]

Rolf
out on the big blue, you dont need to have the plotter on. and many other stuff turned off also. a i_pad will do plety. to tell where you are.
saves a lot of power. Just make sure thet not all the : Pilot, instruments, Plotter ect goes on the same power switch.

What if you did 4 x 235 W panels. ?

(and where i am now we are haveing 75knots of wind, the ocean is looking great, middel of the North Sea.)

[roetter]

Originally Posted by careka

Rolf
out on the big blue, you dont need to have the plotter on. and many other stuff turned off also. a i_pad will do plety. to tell where you are.
saves a lot of power. Just make sure thet not all the : Pilot, instruments, Plotter ect goes on the same power switch.

What if you did 4 x 235 W panels. ?

(and where i am now we are haveing 75knots of wind, the ocean is looking great, middel of the North Sea.)

Hi Geir Ove
You are right. But I will have all instruments, including radio on one breaker though but can turn off the plotter with its own power switch.

I am playing with the available space and dimensions and have a few options. It will come down in the end which ones I can get.

Rolf