Mid-Atlantic heat

[Ti' Punch]

We are sweating it out here in Cape Charles, VA. Just wondering how everybody else is doing with this heat. After last summer, we put a portable AC unit on the boat. It has made all the difference for us this year. It ties us to a 30 amp shore power receptacle, but I don't know if we could stand to be on the boat right now without it.

[Pete7]

51 degrees north in Southern England. It has been raining solid for 2 months and this morning I saw a bloke called Noah collecting wood to build a boat for some reason.

Oh and some of the Englaish water companies still have hose pipe bans in place due to a shortage of water

[TheOffice]

Sailed out of Annapolis yesterday. Good breeze, but I could not have stayed on the boat. Way too hot and humid. Skipped the fireworks and went home.

[kismet]

Living aboard at anchor. In Annapolis at the moment and thinking of moving north and east. Wet sweat soaked sheets on the bunk is the norm and getting old fast.

[JonathanSail]

On the hard near Beaufort NC, it's tough to work outside during the heat of the day. I never turn the little AC on the boat off and I would leave if I didn't have it.

[netplus1]

Calling for 102 on Saturday. Solomons/Patuxent River area.

[Travlin-Easy]

99-degrees at the head of Chesapeake Bay at noon today, good breeze earlier, but seems to be dying down. Too hot to sail, at least for me.

One thing that came to mind yesterday was the thought of rigging an automotive air-conditioning unit to the boat's engine. I really don't believe it would consume much in the way of horsepower, especially for the larger engines, and you could completely eliminate having to have a noisy AC generator onboard.

Essentially, you could air condition the entire cabin anytime you are running the engine. The tiny air-conditioner in my Dodge Grand Caravan cools the entire van in just a matter of a few minutes, and when set to high, you could hang meat in the van after running it for about 15 minutes.

Has anyone ever looked into this?

Gary

[ohdrinkboy]

Hot....spent most of the day in the water yesterday. At work today.

[JonathanSail]

You can add an ac system with a compressor driven by your main engine. This isn't going to be a good setup for most cruisers since they don't spend most of their time motoring, but instead spend most of their time at anchor or in a slip. Running the main engine just to power a compressor is going to be wasteful and bad for the main engine. Depending on the boat you may also be adding a lot of heat inside the boat, damaging the transmission by running the engine with the trans in neutral etc.

For something like a ferry that is constantly underway adding an primary engine driven AC may be a good setup. For a cruising boat that spends most of it's time at anchor or in a slip other setups will be much better. Since AC consumes so much energy you are going to be limited to either shore power, genset power or an AC that runs with a built in engine/power source that runs on gas/diesel/propane/etc.. I'm not sure how common they are now but I've seen AC units that include their own small engine used on busses in the past.

That's my understanding of such a setup in any case. I'm happy with my little window unit dropped into the companionway that I can run off of shore power or off of the generator when needed.

Jonathan

[Ti' Punch]

The forecast looks the same for the next 4 or 5 days. My kids and dogs are about to mutiny on me.

[chef2sail]

We are staying at the dock this weekend with the AC on and going to work on projects inside the boat preparing her for our New Englland LI Sound trip in a month. Sunday they are calling for a break back down to 92.

Dave

[Travlin-Easy]

Unfortunately, all the work on the boat I have left to do is topside, so I'll be staying in the house until Sunday when the cold front passes through and temperatures plunge to the low 90s.

Dave, if you venture north of Pooles Island, look for an old codger sailing down the bay aboard an old Morgan, singing Jimmy Buffett songs, and drinking Margarettas.

Cheers,

Gary

[foggysail]

AL GORE----PLEASE, PLEASE HELP US!!!!!!!

[S/V Alchemy]

32C degrees by the LAKE today in Toronto, and forecast to go to 36C (97F), which would bust a record for July 6 here.

The lake in early July is still cool compared to the air, and has a definite moderating effect...usually...so even though we are not at Chicago or Virginia levels of 100F or higher sustained temps, we are close and it's hotter than many can easily bear. I just did shopping on my bike and was definitely feeling it, and I spend a lot of time inside a steel boat, which is about as hot as you'd imagine.

The tough part is not having A/C because we have the wrong kind of windows and hot-water rads...so it's fans and selective window opening and closing.

It would help, too, if there was more than an angel's fart worth of wind, but there is not.

[S/V Alchemy]

Originally Posted by foggysail

AL GORE----PLEASE, PLEASE HELP US!!!!!!!

Don't ask for heat relief from a source of hot air and noxious gases!