Pearson 365 and 367

Ooops. Sorry. I haven't checked in in a while.

The height of the wind gen mount was determined simply by making sure that it cleared the roach of the main and the backstay and topping lift. No specific measurement. I am very happy with the mount. It is a fairly heavily constructed stainless steel mount and has withstood 85mph winds so far.

The bowsprit is factory. I have had great luck with it thusfar and have carried both a 35 # Delta and a 45# CQR on it.

Mike, I used a sheet of 1/2" marine grade ply, covered with white Formica.

Doug

I believe it was 405 365's.

Tops-In-Quality makes a beautiful and rugged midship ladder that attaches to the genoa track and folds up neatly where the lifeline gates are.

Tops-In-Quality

In my opinion, he's full of shit.

For what it's worth....

I had a PVC inflatable that literally got sticky, turned brown & black and disintegrated in the course of about 3 summers.

I've had my Achilles Hypalon for 3 years, it spends a solid 7-8 months per year on the water, is our main transportation back and forth from our mooring daily (we're liveaboards) and it is in just as good a shape as when I bought it. We don't cover it.  Ever. It spends so much time in the water, we use the inflatable anti-fouling bottom paint.

The only option I would consider over Hypalon, is a hard dinghy.

If you're looking for a light weight hard bottom inflatable, you might also want to consider the AquaPro.  The AquaPro uses aluminum for the hull material and wasn't much heavier than my Achilles. I have friends that just recently returned from a 6 year circumnavigation and used a AquaPro as their tender and it held up well & came back looking very good.

I would agree that for coastal cruising, a cellular air card is probably the best way to go. That would also allow for some web surfing as well. Offshore unfortunately, they are not an option.

We use the AirX Marine and could not be happier with it. I chose it for a couple of reasons.

1. Self regulating,  no need for a charge controller. The AirX charges just like my Heart Interface charger. Starts with an accept high voltage charge, and then drops into float. This is ideal for battery maintenance.

2. AirX are probably the most popular wind generators out there. My thinking was that in the event of a problem with the generator, they would be easy to get parts and technical advice for. As it turned out, I had a 70 knot gust hit a year ago and it damaged the circuit board. I called Southwest Power, and they sent me a new board, no charge.  It was also a very easy change.  Apparently, what whacked the board was that the generator was running in about 10 knots when the squall hit with the sudden gust. They stated that it was unusual for the board to be damaged from this, but replaced the board anyway. The new board has not encountered that problem and has experienced similar conditions. Perhaps it was just a weak component on the original circuit board.

With regards to the solar panel, we use a Kyocera 125 mounted on the stern rail. I ran the wire inside the stanchion pipe and down to the Trace charge controller mounted in the port side locker.

Doug

I used the Adler Barbour Cold Machine with the Power Plate. I had made the decision that I didn't want to use the engine to refrigerate. I added blocks of insulation to the bottom right side of the box and decked it off with a piece of plexiglass/lexan, basically cutting the box in about half.

In this configuration, the fridge runs only 2-3 times a day and voltage draw is pretty nominal. So far our solar panel and wind generator have kept up.  When we are running the engine, we will turn the fridge up all the way to get it as cold as it can get. This will keep the box cold for most of a day after we shut the engine down without the compressor running.

I also reconfigured the the "doors" to the fridge. Instead of opening, athwarthship, they now open bow to stern, are independently hinged, and have latches to keep them secure in the event of a knockdown or roll.  I used some weatherstripping to seal the doors as we used to get a lot of condensation there, telling me that we were losing cooling efficiency.

I built and West Systemed to the hull a shelf for the compressor in the port side cockpit locker to the left and above the battery shelf. This spot allows not only for good air exchange, but ease of service.

Hope this helps.

Doug

Seven Seas Cruising Association.

Great club. Good forum with lots of equipment evaluations from the real world. Also good information on cruising areas around the world.

Seven Seas Cruising Association

Rocinante on her way up to Mt. Desert, Maine a summer ago.

The windvane steering Rocinante nicely in the hardest conditions for a windvane. Light wind. It was blowing about 5-7. The vane is a Fleming Global Major.

There's just something magical about a windvane. I can watch it steer for hours. <img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_lol.gif" alt=":lol:" title="Laughing" />

A view I hope I never see other than at the annual re-pack/certification.

Our DBC Swiftsure Global 6 person liferaft.

Rocinante during her bi-annual haulout. Fresh hull compounding and waxing and the new black instead of blue bottom.  It was a tough haul out this year. It was 90+ when I was compounding and waxing.



Still looking pretty good after 27 years!

The Nav desk

On this picture, if you look to the upper left of the monitor, you'll see the green light that comes on when email is waiting. The unit itself was small enough to mount behind that panel on the lower left side. This was also a very easy run to the computer cabinet, which was once the wine cabinet.



This picture shows my 15" flatscreen running my Cmap program, the waterproof flexible keypad and the instrument repeater showing depth, speed, windspeed, water temp. The Magellan GPS is strictly used as a position link to my Furuno radar screen in the cockpit, the Garmin runs the Cmap, and the Skymate GPS unit is mounted on the stern rail. The Raytheon sideband can just be seen on the far right.

You need to buy the Skymate satellite modem (we bought the Skymate 200 kit). Nothing more than a small black box. It connects to a laptop or desktop PC via a serial cable. You load the small 50 meg program (comes with the modem or downloadable on their website), mount the antenna and (gps receiver if you get that option), mount the little green light, and that's about it. Setting up the account and activating it takes about 10 minutes.

Check out their website for the FAQ's on it.

http://www.skymate.com/user_groups/recr ... ating.html