JPK 45 Project

[Meaban]

We have ordered a 45' to the French JPK shipyard.
It's now time to finalize many options.


We live in Nantes, on the west coast of France.
Our project is to sail around the world with special interest for the areas that are mostly preserved from heavy tourism. Crew will be mainly my wife and I, both about 60. We have 30 years of sailing behind us, including a trip around the Atlantic ocean.



We hate running the engine so we choosed a light and rather performing boat, made of fiberglasse/corecell sandwich under the infusion process. So it will not be the most confortable option, but it's our choice.


I'll split the subjects in different posts and hopefully look for your good advises.

[Meaban]

Our first subject now is the electrical diagram.

We'll keep butane /propane for cooking, but we intend to add a 2000W induction pad, that we may use mostly while at anchor, from a 3000W Multiplus. Other big consumers should be freezer, fridge, watermaker, retractable bow thruster (about 5000W, short time use...in principle &#128521), 1700W windlass, 1 electric winch. Altogether about 200Ah / day

Production : mostly solar panel (450W to be quickly doubled, maybe with a cassette system), + a 600W Watt & Sea generator

Starting from scratch, our choice is to built a system around a 24V house bank.

I’d like to ask the shipyard to built up a simple system, well secured, that I may upgrade progressively :

• engine battery / alternator Volvo D2 oem : 12V, hitachi well know 115A
• DC-DC 12/24 30A from battery to 24V LFP house bank
• DC-DC to the front 24V bowthruster + windlass battery.
• Cerbo GX
• Victron MPPT for 450W solar panels on the composite Arch

Then within 2-3 years I should certainly add a second LFP house battery in parallel, a second DC-DC for the house bat or a second alternator 24V for it, a spare autopilot, and so on…

On important thing is that we are not retired yet, so for a couple of years we’ll be sailing mostly in Northern Europe, so any failure will not be as critical as in some lost areas that we may visit later.

Even though LFP batteries are not new, shipyards have been rather shy for a long time with Lithium. So their first proposal was to go full Victron, which is good for lots of stuff, but not for the batteries, at least price wise.

The good new is that Shipyard agrees for me to supply the battery and BMS, as far as they are bought in Europe for insurance issues. The shipyard cares particularly about communication with Victron Cerbo GX, but right or wrong this no a key issue for me since the lead/AGM engine battery will be between LFP and alternator, so we don't need a can communication with the Cerbo to manage HVC / LVC

Looking for a 24V 160-200Ah house battery, what choice do I have ?

• Drop-in : here there is no Battleborn or Epoch importers. It’s a pity since these brands are some of the fews to have good built-in BMS, and there are few 150-200Ah 24v drop-in batteries on the market
• Buiding my own battery on basis of winston cells : there are few Winston importers in Europe, and the most know GWL has almost no Winston cells for sale now
• Which BMS : JPK shipyard refers to the Victron web page about compatible BMS, say REC and 123. I like the REC ABMS, well adapted for a boat, but it’s 4 cells only. I don’t like so much the 123, which is not so well protected and with a poor passive balancing system.

So what else? Please let me know your feeling and if there are other options. For example the JK BMS looks very nice while reasonably priced, but getting it from China is no way for the JPK shipyard.