Arion upgrades
Arion's West Indian Adventure
Hermione & Douglas Pattison
Fri 12 Jun 2015 11:55
A quick run through:
Windlass.
This in my mind was the most important upgrade. The most stressful aspect of family cruising has always been anchoring. This was therefore most important. I did plenty of research and found that not many 362s had made this upgrade and the ones that had had all done it differently and I was not happy with the way they were done. In the end we decided to build a shelf in the anchor locker and fit a capstan style windlass.
Fridge.
This was a close second on the list. Previously we used a cool box fridge that was stored under the chart table. It was always in the way. We decided to therefore convert the cool box in the galley into a fridge with a keel cool element. This involved drilling through the hull which is never a pleasant experience. All in all this has gone well and improvements have been made to the insulation too.
Chartplotter
To make live easier I have upgraded the chartplotter and moved it onto a Pod (Scanstrut) at the helm. I just wanted to make navigation easier when arriving in new places and exploring the unknown. I had no idea that this would actually be the biggest headache of the job. Which basically involved a re-wire of most systems on board. Thank you Nick who spend many hours and got his mind around it.
Stereo
Not much to say other than we never had one and now we have salon speakers in the head lining and cockpit speakers. :)
Water Maker
This was an after thought thanks to my good friend Hamish who talked me into it. We have very limited water capacity on board. 100 litres. I have fitted a Katadyn Power Surviour 40e which can make about 8 litre p hour. This instal went very smoothly and now nicely fits next to battery compartment.
Bimini & Solar
Having looked into all the renewables available I decided I liked Solar the most and I would go long in Solar. Having done my electrical audit I worked out that if I could get about 350 Watts of Solar on we should be covered. The only place for this would have to be the Bimini. So far I have put a 50w panel on the coach roof and I am going to have 3 x 100 W on the Bimini.
Other upgrades include:
Electric beige pump.
wifi Aerial & router
back to back charging with the addition of dedicated engine starting battery
New sails
Led lights around cabin
Bigger hot water tank with 1 KW immersion element
mains inverter for 240v
Deck hot water shower.
I will post some photos in the next entry.