In my last post, I covered things that were issues during our NZ cruise in 2012. I thought it would be worthwhile to review the work we are having done prior to our departure form NZ this year. Sorry – no pictures as we are still in Pittsburgh, but I do have some pictures coming on some of the work from Todd Rickard who is heading down to NZ shortly. I also intend to break this in to several posts since some of the upgrades and the reasons behind them will take more space. So here goes.
The big one – installation of a Get Home drive. We are installing a separate engine, transmission, shaft and get home prop. This is not your typical, anemic get home drive. A four cylinder 100 HP Yanmar will propel the boat at around 8 knots. This was a significant modification that not only involved the engine et al but major modifications to the engine room as well. Much more on this to come.
Modifications to the genset. We have had raw water impeller failures that have ranged from as low as 100 hours to as much as 250 hours – still much below the 500 plus hours one would suspect. This was not a particular issue on our NZ circumnavigation as total genet time was under 77 hours in over 4 months of cruising. We suspect (and hope) that part of the issue is plumbing related. From the raw water manifold, the piping routes to the back and far side of the genset where it connects to the inlet pipe. From thence, it travels a horrible route (courtesy of Onan) up and over the back of the genset, down the side, under the engine and then up the front to the raw water pump. Said piping is almost all a one piece of bent stainless tube. Said stainless tube developed pinhole leaks during our circumnavigation and was impossible to remove without tearing the genset apart – a MAJOR ordeal – so we lived with it. Onan – when we bitched – advised that the “new”design did not have a one piece stainless tube. Nice that they told us after the fact. Our (and Circa’s) solution was to eliminate all of this a plumb directly front eh manful to the raw water pump which is close to the manifold. Other improvement will be to use “blue” run dry impellers. Will report back if that fixes things.
Communications – another big area that will deserve a separate post. Short info is that we are installing a far more capable 3G router and wifi system. More to come.
Boat Monitoring – We have been extremely impressed with the Maretron system. This year we are upgrading to N2K which allows us to design our own screens and project any information that is on the ethernet buss out over not just wifi but the internet – and that includes warning and turning on and off boat systems from anywhere in the world. VERY neat stuff.
4 Blade prop – Now that we are out of engine warranty, we rare upgrading to a 4 blade, higher pitch prop. While we may no longer be able to reach full (2300 RPM) at wide open throttle, we will increase boat speed at lower RPM’s – we are thinking around 10 knots at 1750 or so. John Deere wants to see full rated RPM at wide open throttle before certifying the engine for warranty purposes. We did that right on the mark. Problem is that we will almost NEVER run at wide open throttle so it is far better to set up the boat/engine/RPM for our most efficient cruising speed. That is 10 knots so that is what we are looking for. To avoid overloading the engine, we are installing an exhaust gas temperature monitor as part of the Maretron system.
There is a bunch of smaller stuff but I am running out of time so I will try to get back to it as well as posts that elaborate more on the things mentioned here.
Happy New Year and best wishes for an FPB in your Future.
Pete and Deb Rossin
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