…previously on Days of our Boat Life...

Ok, so maybe you read “The Plan” and maybe you didn’t…but if you are reading this now you want to see the crazy freaking refit list we have to tackle. Hope you enjoy the ride. It’s a bit scary.

REFIT 1 (Florida): The GENERATOR

Ahhhh the generator. The giant pain in our ass (back is more accurate really) that has never really been working right since the day we got the boat but has been limping along with lots of attention and repairs...has finally died. Well it’s in it’s death rattle stage and we don’t want to start a fire so we aren’t actually running it to it’s death but for all intents and purposes it’s dead.

So shit. We need a new generator. Oh ya, that estimate we hear of $1K per 1kW of power is NOT TRUE. Try $2-3K per 1kW. Yikes. Fortunately this death has occurred in proximity to Florida which is boat-supply-central so we will be able to get a new one installed “quickly” (already purchased a new Northern Lights 5kW generator)…of course with any boat job this could be a fucking nightmare spin-off of a million other things so we are booking the install for the day after we arrive in Florida to hopefully allow for some contingency.

Because it’s not just the new generator we need to have installed actually. My heading should have been POWER GENERATION. Here is the list of new shit we have purchased, or are in the act of purchasing to be installed in Florida that relates to our electrical system (get ready):

-       New Northern Lights 5kW generator

-       New Mastervolt 110amp charger

-       New Watt&Sea regulator

-       New Lobster fridge and freezer optimizers

-       New remote display

-       New AirCon control panel

We are still debating on:

-       Another 100Ah Relion lithium battery

-       Another 370w LG solar panel

Why? Sort answer is that like the generator, the charger and regulator and control panel for the A/C are broken. The fridge and freezer we want to upgrade in the UK or EU possibly but we need more time for research and the optimizer will help reduce power draw without compromising cooling. The new remote display will be best with the new generator. An additional battery would be a step toward being able to run the watermaker WITHOUT the generator (final step would be significantly upgrading our inverter which requires a total panel re-wire which we aren’t going to contemplate until we are in Europe) and an additional solar panel would help us generate more power in climates where we don’t have constant trade winds turning our wind generator.

Oh ya, the wind generator. Our D400…super reliable and really great for trade winds…until like last week. We seem to have a problem with the regulator again (recall the regulator failed in Grenada and we almost lost the boat to a fire, twice actually, before solving the problem with a new one)…now, fortunately, the problem isn’t voltage spike being run through the house battery bank blowing out various pieces of equipment, the problem is that it’s not producing for long periods of time. It spins free (fast and loud) without resistance (the resistance is what creates the electricity) and then at some point the magnets kick in and power is produced…but its happening more and more and we are producing less and less as a result….so let’s add to the above list:

-       D400 regulator

For anyone who knows boats, they know that is a SUBSTANTIAL electrical refit list. How did we get here you ask? Well the short answer is time and wear and the longer answer is 3 years in the Caribbean with hard-to-access parts and a pandemic making things tricky to make any major improvements has meant we’ve had to come up with patchwork solutions to keep going for a while.

But wait…that’s not all (imagine me saying this in a gameshow host voice)!!!

Our trusty, 21 year old Force 10 stove is also slowly dying…starter doesn’t work (hasn’t for years, and yes we’ve changed the battery), broiler doesn’t work (never has), one of the 3 burners doesn’t work and now some of the welding for the grate over the burners is failing…ugh And most importantly (because we have been eating all this time so it obviously is still workable) is that we are missing the bars for the pot clamps to attach to for passage which means cooking at sea is super dangerous. Yes I’ve done it…off shore for many days…but I don’t want to do it on this trip and continue to test my luck. So we MIGHT install a new stove before we go. So there is another item for the list:

-       Force 10 propane stove (plus a few spare bottles)

Ok so that is pretty much the refit list for Florida. It’s a lot to get done in 4 weeks. The generator will be by far the most difficult – both removal and install will be complicated and we will be working with experts to get it done as quickly as safely as possible. The other items we can manage ourselves and hope hope hope go smoothly.

Oh ya, to be clear…this refit list is NOT all we have to do! We have a huge job list related to passage prep the least of which is provisioning and reorganizing the boat, getting the rig inspected, quickly hauling and inspecting the prop and buying about a million things in Florida. I’ll write a separate post about the passage prep situation.

REFIT 2 (UK or Netherlands…TBD): The DECK

Let’s start with what’s changed. The biggest change is that after MUCH discussion and debate and advice (solicited and not) we have decided NOT to replace our teak deck with more teak. We decided we would replace the deck with a synthetic teak, Flexiteek to be exact.

Why have we done this? Lots of reasons and they started with the geo-political considerations when using teak. After lots of reading we learned that the best teak, which is what is used on the decks of the best sailboats, is always from slow-growing tropical hardwood which are mostly located in Myanmar.

Teak is used on boats for lots of good reasons…the natural oils in the wood are perfect for a sea environment, the salt exposure actually helps the wood maintain it’s oil rather than strip it away, cleaners and whatnot are not required to prevent algae or fungal growth, it is durable, has good grip, can be finished in many ways, doesn’t shrink or expand much at all as the environment changes, and it is beautiful….and it is tradition.

It is also rare, really rare in the world. It grows really slowly, and the slower it grows the better quality it is (which means farmed teak which grows quickly isn’t a good solution). It is expensive. Without going into all the gory details, we were worried about the sustainability of teak harvesting. Yes it’s being going on for 2000 years, yes it’s on many if not most of the high-end yachts including virtually every Hallberg-Rassy, but that doesn’t mean that we should blindly follow step. We aren’t really follow-steppers. We learned some interesting things about how teak from Mynamar is accessed (basically deck builders aren’t responsible for any due diligence to ensure the wood is ethically sourced and not resulting in the ravaging of the landscape in the country), the teak being used in Europe now is from stockpiled sources that were built up over the last 10 or so years as the legality of buying teak got more and more complicated. I’m not saying that all teak used by boat builders is bad, or illegal, or shady, or whatever. The bottom line for us is, if there is a more sustainable choice, one that doesn’t potentially exploit resources that take decades and decades to renew, one that isn’t “green washed”, we felt like we should explore it.

The biggest hurdle for us was the fear that putting a synthetic deck on our HR would decrease the value of the vessel when we sell it someday. We received many many opinions on this but we decided that they were just that, opinions and not facts based on trends in data because there aren’t enough boats out there like ours with synthetic decks on them yet. It’s sort of like how people would speculate as to the future black book value of their e-vehicle when there were barely any used ones on the market. Soooo…we have reconciled ourselves to being early adopters in newer decking technology and trust that it will all work out for the best.

There are certainly some advantages to Flexiteek over teak; it is very durable, it is recyclable, it has better foot grip, lower cost to design, build and fit, resists staining, cooler on the feet (teak gets HOT), easy to maintain / clean…and there are products and really do retain the look of teak.

What a hard decision, we love natural wood, but it felt like for us, a more innovative direction that we felt more comfortable with ethically. And no, I don’t have the side by side comparison of emissions required to manufacture one over the other and their relative carbon footprints but I would love it if you have it.  What I do know is the phrase “its they way its always been done” has always made my skin crawl a bit.

So we have been planning this project with Becky at Mantis Marine in England (she is amazing) and are currently sorting out a place to get the deck installed indoors, then moved to a wet slip for the winter months, during which we will travel by land (see The Plan. for more information). However it has been complicated and harder to get a marina lined up than anticipated and we just found out (today) that we can’t get the 20% VAT excluded..soooo…we are going to seek a quote from The Netherlands as well. It’s close to where we had been planning up to today, doesn’t change our timing in the Azores, is a place we can store the boat while we travel on land and we might be able to get the deck done without the VAT. The communication has been more complicated than expected and finding a place where we can get the work done, and stay all winter is hard when you really don’t know the area but we are getting there. I have about 20 more emails to send today to inch us forward.

Oh ya, and even though this heading is The DECK, it really should be The DECK, ETC. because we have a giant bouquet of other jobs to consider.

At this point we are also contemplating: new lenses for the portlights and upgrading the fridge and freezers to something more energy efficient (more research required), adding more solar, adding more Lithium batteries, upgrading the inverter, changing our galley countertops, refurbishing the head cabinets, replacing the washing machine that has never worked in 3 years despite many attempted repairs…and so on. WTAF right?!?

Hey dudes, it’s our home, it’s 21 years old, and we want to keep this boat beautiful as well as functional. But function comes before beauty :P

So this long list is all basically “nice to haves” rather than “need to haves” (like the deck and everything in Florida), and will largely get planned on our arrival in the UK and be somewhat dependant on cost. Right now, we just don’t have the bandwidth to plan more than the moving pieces required for Refit 1, the upcoming ocean passage and the deck replacement…so after we get the first two on that list under our belts we’ll have more brain power to consider the “nice to haves”. It may be that we split up Refit 2 over a few countries but right now we are just trying to get to the point were we can make water again…baby steps.

Much love,

M