Cool it!

   Its been getting hot in here. the days are in the 80's and the temp in an uncooled, closed up boat with teak decks can climb into the 100's. The bad news is our AC was on the way out, and now its dead from the dock power issue. I went and got a new start solenoid, to no avail. The start coil was dead as far as I could tell, and the unit was in bad shape mechanically anyway after 20 some years.

Timing (and Christ) were on our side again. I needed an 18,000 BTU unit to replace our main. I started to look online at the usual places. Then I checked the local craigslist. There was a newish unit here in town!!! $550, with pump and all. I investigated by only sending an email. I waited 3 days before heading off to sailors exchange. When I got to the exchange I asked about getting a unit, I was told there was a unit that did cooling only on the shelf for $600. Bummer, because we need heat as well. Just so happened as I was doing my regular deal browsing I was approached by an employee. He told me he had a unit for sale and once he described it, I knew it was the one on craigslist. We got to negotiating, and when we were done he was going to keep the pump I didn't need, deliver it, and the unit was mine for $350. WOW!!!

 It worked great until a few days ago. It was a really nasty hot day, and it just could not keep up. Then came the error message for overpressure. This basically means there is not enough water flowing to cool the refrigerant. So I took my little cleaning snake, and I ran it thru the tubes, in a 90 degree cabin. Nothing. Then I reversed the flow. It worked! now the unit is flowing nicely, along with the aft AC unit. And in the first hour the two working together have dropped the temperature at time of writing to 82. we will see how it holds out in the long term. Even if it breaks, being a new digital unit, it will be worth fixing.

The new unit is actually smaller in size. It looks like it was just designed in a better way, but with newer technology also so the compressor is smaller. The compressor does run very very hot, not sure how the old one ran, but ouch, its hot. Now I just need a way to utilize the extra room that is left over. I still have to secure it, and because its not 100% yet, I am waiting until I know its all done, before I secure it once and for all. 

Busy Busy Busy

   Wow, no updates in a long time. Sorry. So we have been busy saving money for the trip, and at the same time I have been working on repairs, small repairs, major changes, and major rebuilds.
Where to begin. Ah yes, the generator.

   I for a long time had been looking for a generator. I had made about 15 calls in about 6 months. I had spent a lot of time online, reading stories of failures, reading what people hate about the generator they have, what do they love about it. I eliminated one from the start. I would not buy a 3600RPM unit. They are very loud, and vibrate a lot. In fact the one we had was 3600, and for the short time it worked for us, I found it very loud.
The next item on the list was what power we needed. I found a slew of 8000 watt units, I quickly realized with everything on the yacht running we only can use 5000 watts, if we try very hard. So 8000 to do simple things at sea like charge batteries, make water, make hot water, was overkill. I realized on most ocations we would use no more then 2500 watts, only using slightly more on very hot, humid, windless nights to run the AC unit. At 1600 watts when running it is the single biggest power consumer on the yacht. We have a second AC unit as well. It uses 1200 watts. so with just those two running for a nasty night we are looking at 2800 watts.
The next issue was fuel usage. The very slow 1800RPM units have a big displacement. the fuel usage I read about was in the 0.5-0.8GPH range. However I heard about one more generator, with a Kubota engine that ran at 2400RPM.
The smallest unit that has been made, and made well, was 2500 watts. these are very rare. I however found I could buy a new unit from Phasor that was 3500 watts for only $4500. This is a 2400RPM unit, properly fresh water cooled, and the fuel usage was 1 gallon of diesel every 5 hours under 1/2 load. 1 gallon every 4 hours under full load.
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So begin my search for a Phasor Generator. Every day I scan the boat classified listings for things that are a great value, and snap up any I can find and I can use. One morning I saw her. "Phasor 3.5 kw marine diesel gen set" It had been completely rebuilt. Asking price was 1200, firm. Well, lets say I nearly dropped out of my chair. A unit I was about to pay $4500 for, had just fell on my lap. The catch was I had to drive half way to New Orleans to get it. No problem. For $3300 I would drive half way to Fiji.

More to come!