Some of the basic stuff we have no doubts about. We wouldn’t dream of getting the shell from anyone but Tim Tyler, for example. As to length, 50’ will still have room for the basics and for us to live in comfort on her during extended summer cruising and for the month we have to be out of the lodge in the winter. The saloon will also be the dining area, and much of the stuff in the study bedroom will move up into the lodge. We’ve been doing a lot of weeding of the filing, getting rid of loads of paper we were keeping for no good reason.
As I will keep stressing, the aim this time round is minimum maintenance and minimum effort working the boat. Hence gas free and a diesel stove rather than a multifuel. As full time liveaboards, redundancy of heat sources was the name of the game, but for extended leisure cruising that’s now less important than having to lug bags of coal and cylinders of gas around. In addition, there’s no doubt that burning solid fuel makes more dust and muck than a drip fed diesel stove, so less cleaning to do as well.
When you are on the boat full time, keeping the fire going isn’t difficult, but leaving Sanity Again unoccupied in the cold months means using oil filled radiators to keep the frost out and so having to leave the shoreline on full time. A diesel stove can be left ticking over on minimum with occasional visits to check up on it. Full winterising isn’t feasible for us – just last weekend we were using the boat as overflow accommodation for a family event.
Thinking about the outside, no brass this time. Chrome or stainless steel for the brightwork, then. Sheila was wondering the other day if we could paint the porthole rims to match the breaklines in the livery, probably cream again.
That’s enough for just now, I’ll get onto the bow next time.
Hi Bruce, following the new blog with interest. I agree with your decision to avoid brass but I would recommend that you use stainless steel rather than chrome fittings. Caxton’s mushroom vents are losing their chrome, especially the one nearest to the chimney (chemical reaction maybe?) but the cleats on the stern are still bright. I guess that the answer probably lies in buying marine grade fittings, expensive but worth it in the long run.
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George: just realised I never responded to this, sorry! As you’ll see from my recent post, we’ve come to the same conclusion about chrome. Not sure yet whether to go stainless or paint the portholes to match the breaklines on the cabin sides.
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Bruce
Slightly off the wall - but technically sound - thought that I came up with too late to incorporate into Ampère is a water-source heat pump. Because of problems with our diesel stove (hopefully soon to be solved) we mostly use fan heaters at 1KW electricity = 1KW heat. Water is much the best source of heat for a heat pump so better to use a heat pump with 1kW electricity - 3 or 4 or 5kW of heat. Linked into an underfloor system using principally waste heat from your generator and you could probably get by without a conventional heating system at all. Just use an electrical top-up on particularly cold nights.
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