I’ve already mentioned in previous posts things like their being poorly equipped with ground tackle and not many with dinghies. Although Urban Legend has a dinghy, she was the ONLY boat among the 24 that I looked at that did. This is largely due to the fact that very little anchoring out takes place over there and most boats simply go from marina to marina – thus making those two items often superfluous.
For this reason also, all of the boats that I viewed were “all electric” (cooking, heating, hot water etc) which, I guess is understandable considering the above. However I did find it rather strange that not one of the boats I looked at had a water heater that ran off the engine as well as electricity, despite the fact that about half of them had water heaters with heat exchangers fitted that made them capable of doing so. According to the survey report and the original equipment list for her that I got from Silverton, Urban Legend’s water heater is a model that is supposed to be fitted with a heat exchanger, but I could have sworn that I checked it out, and it was not! Mind you, the heater is in a totally different place to where it states it is in the manual, and where all the other Silverton 453’s heaters were – so who knows? Ironically also in the manual is a section on “15 ways to lower your fuel consumption” and number 15 is: “use less hot water so you don’t have to run the genset so often!”
But now, for all my fellow Kiwi boaties, how weird is this……..?????
All of the refrigeration (fridge, freezer, icemaker) on a Silverton 453 is 120VAC and will only run off the shore power or genset. That means for the 6 hours a day that we would be running the main engines on the Loop , or if we’re swinging on the anchor, the generator has to run just to keep those appliances going (unless we buy a really long power cord!). It’s true – I checked with Silverton!
I think we will be fitting a12VDC/120VAC inverter fairly promptly, as this doesn’t make any sense to me at all.
And before anyone asks…. Engine driven eutectic refrigeration, commonplace on boats in New Zealand
Still – no point in stressing about it. That’s just how it is and we now own one so will have to make do or change it to more like what we’re used to when we get there. There will be other things that we will need to do that are yet un-thought of….but that’s boating. After all, there is no such thing as the Perfect Boat (for Looping or anything else, for that matter).
Catch you next time (220 days to go)
