Our boat is a fin keeled 1990 Moody 346, one of the last
constructed before they evolved into the 35. We are still cruising in the
Med, though with the arrival of Grandchildren our roaming has been somewhat
curtailed. The boat is now berthed in Menorca, Balearics so we do have some
days of hot weather, over 40 degrees in the cabin. For legal reasons, the
following is my personal impression of the equipment and how it performed for
us in our situation. Sun The most
important addition was a Bimini or sun shade for the cockpit area.
Environment inside the boat We
use a number of cooling methods:
On Anchor a 12v Car fan above the chart table which can be directed towards the galley or the main saloon the main problem is the noise.
Computer fans are a better choice and some have temperature sensing built i so they will vary their speeds
Our heating is an Eberspacher system which is very useful to blow cool air around the boat. The fan is very quiet, takes cool air from the cockpit locker and cools the aft cabin as well. It uses quite a lot of 12v power.
In harbour we use a largish
domestic mains fan which is quieter and an electric heater on fan
only
Fridge
Our original fridge was built for the British climate needed modifying for the Med. I added a "computer" variable speed fan (temperature sensing) to the cooling fins and made some largish holes through the fibreglass down to the biges, to draw up cool (water temperature) air. Our new fridge is brilliant it is an Isotherm model and has passive water cooling from a skin fitting. Normally you would connect to the sink drain skin fitting, but on my boat i made a new skin fitting near the fridge compressor Last year we did not have any problems with the fridge during our trip to Corsica and Sardinia. On anchor we can last many days with our Solar panels.
It is possible to make ice but better to buy in Marinas and keep in fridge.
All marinas give pleanty of power for battery chargers and 4 amp (220volt) water heaters
Water
Fit extra
tanks if you can, the standard 40 gallons on our 346 is not a lot and a 10 or
20 gallon flexible would help if you are going to anchor a lot. The 2 places
best suited on our Moody are the aft most hanging locker (before the aft cabin)
to balance the junk in the cockpit locker. If there is room, under the
starboard side cabin seats (next to the galley) unfortunately for us we have
pumps in here. I suppose the best solution is a water maker situated in the
engine room!
The VDO water meter is not very accurate when heeled
and seizes up if you fill up with a lot of hard water.
This year I
am going back to basics and putting poly sight tubes.
The two tanks under
the saloon seats might be leaking a little water into the bilges (air hissing
noise after filling up). Unscrew tank tops and re-mastic.
Batteries and charging
I had 2-110 amp wet batteries in the engine compartment wired as one bank and 1-110 amp Gel type in the box at the foot of the stairs. You could fit another in the box if you use lots of power....the fridge was our biggest drain!
Charging: We had an Adverc connected to our alternator to speed up the charging process this has performed very well, also very important for battery life. After our Lucas Alternator went down it proved almost impossible to repair locally. The best solution was a car Marinelli to limp home but it never charged enough mainly because of it's smaller pulley and inefficient internal regulator. I have now fitted a Balmar 70 amp unit with Balmar ARS5 controller, more about this later
This year I have fitted Life line AGM batteries and so far they seem great...more to follow on how they perform
Fitted a 30 watt Statpower charger (Canadian) for shore power
charging and this is very good and sensibly uses convection cooling with large
cooling fins. Tried a smaller French job (Tecsup) but this was useless as in
hot climates, the cooling fan was on nearly the whole time, strange as it
claims to be designed for med conditions!
We have a small 20watt solar
panel which we point at right angles to the sun for maximum charging, a simple
amp meter will show you that you can obtain twice the power output by this
method, rather than have it horizontal!!
Anchors original CQR which is great and a Bruce which also has proved good
Marina boarding-plank or
passerelle
Navigation have gone for Navman kit which seems good and Navbus connects all the instruments which consist of 3150 Wind, 3000 Speed and Repeater. The Tracker 5507 mounted on the Wheel pedestal is superb especially when sailing single handed
Engine Spares-car or agricultural
derivitative
Water filters
Radio communication with UK
Email and Mobile phone
EPIRB
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