5 Top Refits | Turning Our Dock Queen to a Cruiser EP 6

5 top Refits to change a Dock Queen into a Cruiser
In our last episode we revealed our top 20 ‘must haves’ when we bought the ‘Elli-Yacht’
However, there were 3 items that we didn’t get on that list that we need to transform our live aboard from a ‘dock queen’ to a ‘cruiser’.
Since our kids have all left the house our goals are to:
• Move from land to the water on a live-aboard,
• Keep working for the next 10-15 years,
• And cruise the Pacific Northwest every chance we can, at a fairly good clip (because we still work)!
However, if that is going to happen… we have to not only address our missing ‘must haves’ but address a couple other items to enable us to cruise to and anchor out in areas that are out of reach of basic conveniences, for sometimes weeks on end.
Soooo here is our top 5 refit items that we tackled to turn our ‘Dock Queen’ into a ‘Cruiser’
• If you don’t have ground tackle… you can’t anchor out! (Rocna)
• If you can’t keep your butt in the seat you can’t navigate less than calm waters (Stidd)
• If you don’t have enough energy, you’ve gotta do without and that ain’t our plan. We use 500w on average but can randomly hit 8KWh for a couple seconds or a couple hours. How?! (AC, electric heat, washer & dryer, fireplace, refer, coffee maker, hot water tank, combo grill/microwave/convection, stereos)
• The shore (50amp 240V Split phase) = 12KWh but you can’t take it with you!!
• Fuel (genset) loads hover at 500W generator
• is 10K cant run it for 20% loads, and I don’t want to have it randomly turning on and bugging our neighbors on the hook when I want to take a shower, run the AC….
• Solar/Wind (shade and dark, we’re a MV so wind meh)
• But dream with me for a moment… what if you could have an Inverter that gives us all of the power we need and manages it’s-self?!
• 3KW = 8KWH
• Watching the batteries constantly to recharge is a bore…. Auto gen
• Fine if you’re a live aboard but, I’m not at my boat everyday…. VRM Portal
• From bed
• From another country
• You can even start your genset!
• Even better…
• Tired of flipping the breaker at the dock when you take too much power? Usually in your PJ’s… Power share
• Quite hours to keep your friends
• What happens if the power goes out on the dock…. Auto gen
• Don’t I have to balance my genset with loads? Hell No!
• Batteries (acid, heavy, inverters can only supply so much power) if we wanted 2.5x the inverter load in reserve with AGM it would be 14 D8 240amp hour batteries with a 50% floor, 2,200lbs, cost +$8K, it would take just under 6hrs to recharge them with a 140amp charger, and where the f am I going to put them?!
• But what if I could do that with 12 138Ah batteries with 95% floor, weigh just 600lbs, recharge in just under 3 hours and cost $6,000?! You can with LifePO4. Here’s how…
• Light
• Recharge ASAP
• GenSet loves them (load & keep the hours down)
• Clean
• 4,000+ cycles (100 days = 40 years basically they may outlive me…)
• Safe
• $ used…
• Downside = BMS cutout safety/cook alternators/redundancy/nothing runs on 48V! So we kept a separate 12V AGM system
• If you don’t have water we can only stay out 4-5 days at a time! Fail (Water maker), and ## 1)
• Electronics aren’t nice to have anymore! Raymarine
• 6 screens 3 on each helm
• WTF?!
• Charts
• Radar
• Engine integration
• Flir Thermal
• AR Cameras
• Wireless VHF who has time for a cord?! So 1980’s!
• Fusion (stereo) & Victron (power)