Barramundi 470 'PtitFilou'

[GordMay]

Greetings and welcome aboard the CF, PtitFilou.

[Poozer]

Salut Vero,

Je ne connaissais pas le Barrumundi 470, donc je me suis renseigne aupres le site web du chantier. (je continue en anglais...)

I know you're experienced, but it looks like the base configuration for the Barrumundi is not ideal for your program. It is very light in terms of fuel and water tank capacity. You will need a watermaker for sure, and would probably have to carry extra diesel containers for long passages. By way of comparison we have 800L of diesel and 600L of water aboard our Catana 471 and that feels about right based on our experience.

Also, rather than the spinnaker options the builder suggests, I encourage you to look at adding a bowsprit and a furling gennaker. We use ours all the time for running and reaching in winds up to 15 knots apparent.

Our Catana has 2 x 50cv Volvo engines and we have really relied on these when we have had to motor into a 35 knot headwind in 4m seas. Definitely go for the larger engine options if you can.

I'm sure you're getting one, but you need a generator. Solar is great during the day, but for night passages, your autopilot, instruments and refrigeration will deplete your batteries. On night passages, we run the genset for a couple of hours before sunrise to keep everything going. The solar panels work amazingly well during the day.

Congratulations on your new boat and your family project. I'm sure you will have a great time.

Doug Hibberd
Catana 471 ZANGEZI

[smj]

Poozer, it seems to me you would gain from a bigger battery bank and more solar. To run down your battery overnight suggests you don't have enough amp hour capacity. Once you have a larger battery bank you can add more solar to keep up with your loads and not have to burn fossil fuel to run your generator. Alternate energy is a beautiful thing.

[Poozer]

Originally Posted by smj

Poozer, it seems to me you would gain from a bigger battery bank and more solar. To run down your battery overnight suggests you don't have enough amp hour capacity. Once you have a larger battery bank you can add more solar to keep up with your loads and not have to burn fossil fuel to run your generator. Alternate energy is a beautiful thing.

I agree with you, there may well be a problem in my DC system that I need to figure out. My house bank is 1040 Ah and I have 8 x 70Watt Solar Panels. I was thinking that should be plenty. I should be able to run a lot longer than 12 hours off the house bank. The ammeter on the house bank isn't working, so I need to fix that so I can determine the draw with the autopilot, nav lights, chartplotters, instruments, radar and radios running, then I need to determine how much battery capacity I have before the voltage drops below 12V. The other big variable load is the electric winches, they suck power fast, so that may be a contributor as well.

[RichardSmith]

Hi Vero,
Nice to see she is coming along nicely!
I am also interested in building at barramundi, would you mind sending me an email at Richard--smith@hotmail.com so I can ask you a few questions?

Good luck and keep us posted!
Rich