Ray Frechette Jr

Solar panels make for very expensive power when not in a liveaboard at anchor scenario. IE: you are looking to be actively using those panels for 4-6 months per year. During those months are you figuring on 4-5 days a week at anchor? If so those panels are working for you about 1/3 of the time... From a strict dollars and cents viewpoint they may not be worth it. However forma "Not having to listen to that diesel engine tonight standpoint... It may very much be worth it. So, Are you planning ona a descent sized inverter too? I plan on fitting an inverter and a Microwave to my Belhaven when I build it. I can well imagine the incredulous stares that computer screens are getting as people read this. However to me it is worth it. Fact is while a Micra invokes a hefty draw the duty cycle is incredibly short. As such the 6-700 watt micro with a total duty cycle of maybe 10 minutes per day will impose a roughly 10 amp hour per day draw on the battery. Not bad at all in my book for the convenience of the Micro to reheat our leftovers we bring from home and minimizes our actual cooking underway. And yes I do plan to buy a solar panel to recover that draw. But then again I will only have an outboard as a kicker, and not a big diesel propulsion unit. Hence the cost justification for a descent solar panel gets easier for me. And my solar panel will not be exposed to weather 24 7 so it's life should be much longer. I figure my battery budget is going to be pretty low on my Bellhaven. Certainly well under 40 amp hours a day. My whole electrical system will be pretty low key too other than the inverter and solar cell. No shore power hookup for me. o Battery charger, just the solar panel and the feed from the outboard. If it ain't gonna be sunny, I will haul the thing home and do some work and wait for a sunny day to go boating.

If your budget can only afford one boat electrical book, this is the ONE. http://www.amazon.com/Boatowners-Illustrated-Electrical-Handbook-Charlie/dp/0071446443 Nigel's book is also very worth having if you are going to be fiddling with big boats with lots of ssytems. You will most certainly get your money's worth out of it. http://www.amazon.com/Boatowners-Mechanical-Electrical-Manual-Essential/dp/0071432388

Well, I just gave a course at Wooden Boat school called "Intro to marine electrical systems". The subtitle of the course that I used in class was "101 ways to burn down or sink your boat and electrocute people you love" Electrical systems on board boats get very expensive very quick. If you are going to do it , do it right. Wing's book lays out the appropriate ABYC recommendations to do it safe. You really do need to understand at least a bit of theory too. Charlie Wings Book Understanding Boat electrical systems is a must have. Also Nigel Calders book on mechanical and electrical systems is a good read too. The 1.5-2.5 range likely refers to start up loads and continuous run loads. IE a compressor has higher startup loads on the electrical system than it takes to keep the compressor running steady state. The better you insulate and construct your ice box the less amp hours you will consume underway. Where you use this, and how often goes a long way to making decisions on how you want to go. Recommendations to a liveaboard in the Carribean would be far different than to someone putzing around in great lakes a few weeks per year. Both books well worth investing time and money into. OK, DC refrigeration is easily the largest load on a boat even when everything is done right. 40 50 amp hrs a day is not far from reality unless very well insulated and in cooler climates. Ice is extremely cheap BTW as my students found out. We actually looked at the cost equivalency of using a Diesel powered battery charger "Ships engine running alternator" to replicate the cold froma a 5 lb block of ice. IIRC it worked outt tot about $25.00 of charging to replicate a $2.50 5 lb block of ice. Wingws book explores the cost of various recharging battery methods per Killowatt hour and Calders book has a lot of info on building a good icebox. Calder advocates 6 inches of insulation, with no more volume than absolutely necessary and a drain with a heat trap on the bottom if ice, and a lid on top with two flanges with gasketing on both flanges that seal well. Ship board AC is limited to use at dock with shore power or with on board Genset. $5-7 K for equipment alone for that genset... If being a liveaboard with DC fridge you will easily be looking at 100 amp hour daily budget. In fact you may need to work to keep it down to that. Once you determine your daily amp hour budget your battery nbank should be roughly 4 times larger than that. And a high output alternator of at least the same as daily amp hour demands and preferably 50% larger. That is one expensive alternator too. Going with dedicated starting battery off of original alternator is excellent plan with high output alternator feeding only house bank. The course at Wooden Boat School would be an excellent primer for you if you can afford tuition and time... Somewhere around 45 hours of instruction time dealing with DC electrical systems, AC electrical systems Galvanic corrosion systems and Lightning protection systems..

Designers are really between a rock and a hard space on rigging diagrams. Graham had the rigging all worked out beautifully on the CoreSOunds. Had rigging kits all worked out. The Ronstan goes and redoes their entire line. I have to say I am not entirely happy with the new stuff they have come out with. So now the designer who specced out Ronstan that is no longer available needs to go and rework the rigging diagrams on all of his boats again. Not to mention that builders are independent lots and mostly have their own ideas about rigging....

Geesh Tom, Graham fears Blizzards more than Hurricanes. Personally I will take 3-5 significant blizzards a year rather than 1 hurricane every 7-8 years myself. I saw what a measly little tropical storm did locally.

Roof fixed today. And Computer is fixed. Power supply had fried and got a used one for $17.00. Now all I have to do is sweep the driveway of all the leaves that fell in it. I feel for you in NC and the hassle these things cost you.

Well Maine I am sure did not fare as rough as NC did. But Irene still pulled some punches on us. Weakened to a Tropical Storm it started with a lot of Rain. Hardly any wind until about 1 PM. Peak gusts locally were in the 50 MPH range but mostly it was in the 40's. It was enough however to uproot a fair amount of trees around town that I could see and more than enough to knock out power for many. At its peak we had roughly 280,000 customers without power. I know that sounds small compared to NC and Virginia, but realize that Maine only has roughly 1.25 million total population. This one customer had 4 people in the house without power. Lights flipped on and off for a few hours as something would hit line and short out and circuit breaker would reset. Power went down for the count at about 4:30 P.M. Fortunately the French Fries were done and we used residual heat in oven to reheat the chicken and veggies. Power stayed out until 8:00 AM today. We kept food in fridge down around 40 by using power inverter and deep cycle battery. I can keep our fridge cold for 24 hours only consuming 40 amp hours... In winter I can keep our house warm by running furnace off the inverter too. 24 hours of warmth only takes roughly 30 amp hours. Your mileage may vary depending on ambient conditions and efficiency of house furnace and fridge. Inventory of damages? My computer and surge protector got cooked by power flivkering on and off. Next time I unplug them before the wind starts. Working with son's netbook... And a garage roof lost about 40 sq ft of shingles. Not bad at all in the grand scheme of things. I can live with it.

One could try their hand at woodgraining paint on the aluminum mast.

No chance. Graham fears the snowstorms much more than the hurricanes

Scott Dufour makes a good point. Both boats tack well and accelerate out of the tack well so that short tacking is easy. I have had 3 other sailboats. My parents have a camp on a lake with a narrow channel out to main lake from the cove. the wind is either blowing into or out of the channel so you are taking one way or the other. the CoreSound is the only boat I have been able to tack my way out of. And I have bneen able to do it repeatedly. I also note the other sailboats in the marina are motoring in or out depending on wind direction and not even trying to short tack. Critical to pointing performance is to make sure your sprits are ong enough to really flatten them. If sprits are too short you can easily lose 10 degrees fo tacking performance. The Glued Lap si probably likely the stronger of the two hulls with the overlapping planks adding longitudinal ribbing making it stiffer and the rounded hull as well. Point that was made is that the hard chine allows you to glass over outer hull where that would not be possible with glued lap. Glass is not to make hull stronger but to provide abrasion resistance and some impact resistance. Truth be told avoiding hitting rocks is the better solution... Sailor skill will play a bigger role than hull on these boats. the CS has an edge speed potential wise but Tom Lathrop handed me my pride on a platter at the Small Reach Regatta outsailing me with abandon in his lapwing.... (Guess where I learned my sprits were too short and I was losing out in a big way on the upwind legs? Which boat do you like the looks of the best? And would you prefer ease and speed of building and performance potential over aesthetics? The Lapwing was designed primarily to provide the aesthetics of a glued lap boat that would perform comparable to a CoreSound.

Other than the rigging details I find the Bellhaven plans incredibly well thought out and developed. I have looked at many plans from many designers and find the Bellhaven plans have all the detail one would want and more than many plans out there. If it is more than you feel like taking on though, rather than tossing in the trash can perhaps a call to Graham and Carla and a request to send back for a refund might be more palatable.

Here is hoping it blows out to Sea and we have clear skies instead of loads of rain.

BTW, with the hurricane potentially taking aim at NC, I would wait a few days for things to settle down some.

Give Graham a call at night . Generally I will send him an email with my question a few days before I call him. That way he can think it over a few days in advance of answering me. Tuesday and Thursday nights he has boat building classes once fall hits..

Yes, If you email Graham or Carla I am sure they would be happy to send you a copy. That would work fine for everything except the Main sheet. I will be varying on the main snotter and downhaul even though Scott says it's not necessary. Sailors are independent cusses sometimes... Still working on how I want the main sheet run, nothing determined yet

Sounds like a descent plan. Do tell me though that you have fuses or circuit breakers within 7 inches of the battery post, or within 40 inches of the battery post if all wire is protected by a sheath of some sort to provide really good chaffe protection. To include any hardwired battery charger connections. And do tell me that you have the battery residing in a battery box to contain spilled electrolyte if the battery case were damaged, (Yes ABYC reccomnedation even in the case of AGM batteries...)And that you do have a means to vent hydrogen gas out of the battery box to atmosphere keeping in mind that hydrogen gas is very low density and only floats upward....(Yes AGM batteries can vent hydrogen) And that your battery charger indeed has an AGM setting.

Without a doubt that is the weak point of this particular plan set. From a designers stand point though it has to be frustrating as riggin is an area where people typically deviate significantly form what a designer puts on paper. I have built a few CoreSounds whcih share the rig. By and large I plan to have the rigin g match the coreSounds rigging. Biggest question to me is how the main sheet will be rigged ont he Bellhaven. I plan on talking to Graham about that one of these days coming up. Mizzen sheet and all other Mizzen lines will be stock as per coresounds. Main downhaul and Snotter will be double ended running down both sides of side deck to adjust one either tack. Halyard will be on starboard tack as I don't see need to adjust that underway. Main sheet is giving me fits though.

That depends. Solar panels are incredibly expensive means of recharging unless it is the cheapest alternative. IE: Are you day sailing only? If then recharging when you get home plugged into utility power will be but a mere fraction of the cost of solar panel recharging. We looked into various charging means in greta depth in Marine electrical course to incluide looking at the costs of reducing demands. We gfactored ou tthe relative cost to DC fridge recharging battery vs Ice. 5 lb block of ice runs 2.49 at expensive convenience store near water. If using a diesel powered battery charger to recharge same load on batteries it is $15.00 worth of recharge... Solar panles much closer ot ice cost if you are using those solar panels each and every day. But If you are using the panels 1 month out of the year and amortizing cost of panels etc it is more expensive than the Diesl powered battery charger.

From what I understand Inland waters is different and subject to state rules if non navigable to the ocean. 6 pack is on navigable waters and USCG jurisdiction and not state, state has control over inland waters. In My state I was talking to someone who said no vessel inspection and just a wiritten state exam, no days at sea requirement. Scary if you ask me. I sure won't be going on any public vessels with that rule in place.

Have you looked at the prices for wind generators?? Best bet is keep electrical demand real light. LED nav lights and GPS and VHF only maybe....

And you note I didn't tear your head off.... Tim Diebert had inquired about a gaff rig sloop for the CoreSound hull. Graham had said there is no reason why not to if the Gaff rig makes your heart go Pitter Patter. Personally I am very very sold on the unstayed cat ketch with sprit booms myself.

Sure doesn't give you many amp hours. Best case looking at around 30 amp hrs. Allowing for no more than 50% discharge that is giving you roughly 15 amp hrs usable .

Well there are days with no wind at all in Maine. But truth be told my oars do not get wet very often at all. Mostly it is the 4 foot canoe paddles for close in work. And if I didn't go to oar and sail boat meets where every body departs regardless of wind I would sit out the no wind days. Only time I have broken out the oars was on the Small Reach Regatta when there was near enough to Nothin movin. And then it was until out of harbor where the open reach allowed a bit more wind. Then I sailed by the row sailin fellas and they hollered out ifn I felt guilty sailing by them or not.

How you gonna get a battery in and out of an 8 inch port?

You can't justify having one though Wes.