2017 So Far

Its been quite a while since I posted on here so here’s a little update of what’s been happening since 2015.

Since the last posting things have progressed a little with SV Pleinair. To start with back in July 2016 I moved Pleinair from her river mooring to a pontoon mooring in the marina, it virtually doubled my costs but hey ho, as I tend to use the boat as a floating cottage from work now it seemed to make sense. I work nearly 2 hours away from home and tend to be away all week, with the boat an hour closer and the marina having all the facilities I need, If I have a short weekend then the boat gets used as an overnight stop.

Of course this means that I get around 24hrs on board every second or third weekend giving me a chance to update and potter.

So, over the winter 2016 to 2017 I have installed a diesel heater, this is one of the smaller webasto 2.9 Kw heaters and although it does the job of warming things up and maintaining it, I reckon that I should have bought the next size up, more diesel usage inevitably but then quicker boat warming. Installation of the main heater unit caused a bit of a headache as there is very little free space on board. The final installation ended up under the cockpit sole, behind the bath tub, as can be seen here. This meant that I had to install a shelf under the sole to hold the unit. Initially the air input was taken from the area the unit was sited in, I’ve since changed this to take the air from the cabin with the hose just laying in the quarter berth. Two outlets have been installed, one in the main cabin and after much head scratching about pipe routing one was installed in the v-berth which also serves the main heads, with the pipe entering the storage box under the quarter berth with a splitter inside, feeding the main cabin vent from one side and progressing through the boat under the starboard settee, bulkhead and hanging area, into the v berth where it exits from the starboard side under bed locker.

VHF

The VHF radio has been upgraded to a Standard Horizon 2200, thus enabling me to do away with one of the two external GPS units on board. The radio has its own built in GPS, along with the built in one on the lowrance chart plotter this offers a modicum of redundancy in that area. I have also added a remote mic to this setup allowing me to hear and operate the radio from the helm, Pleinair is tiller steered and its virtually impossible to hear the radio when under motor.

Sprayhood.

 

The new sprayhood

The sprayhood we inherited when we bought Pleinair finally died a death so an alternative was purchased from CJMarine. Its not my ideal but it performs the task. I still need to finish installing this as the main channels need to be installed, until I sort and decide what i’m doing about halyards and sheets back to the cockpit I’ll leave this as is, as it requires some cutting of the channel and bottom of the sprayhood.

 

 

 

Cooker

Although I was generally happy with the spirit stove I had installed when I purchased Pleinair, with the increased usage I was finding that I couldn’t be bothered to be creative with the cooking on board, so we purchased a new Dometic Starlight, and with the assistance of my friend Bruce (a.k.a. SVPagan), I have returned to using gas on board. Not my ideal but hey ho, if I want an oven then up with it I shall put.

 

Thats not it by a long shot, but so far we are making small progress.

 

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