Snow Gum saloon tour - Garcia Exploration 45
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- čas přidán 12. 09. 2024
- Here is an impromptu tour of our messy, but beautiful, saloon, showing the main features. You’ll hear me rattling on about how good the view is from the saloon. Imagine spending winter somewhere where it rains a lot and it’s almost always windy and that you don’t have this wonderful view of the outside world. Carolyn and I have enjoyed this view enormously. It’s just as good out sailing, where it is a huge factor in avoiding the feeling of seasickness. Please let us know in comments if there’s details you’d like to see. Regards from Rick and Carolyn.
Congrats, fellas! You've inspired me to get my own...2023. Enjoy your beautiful Garçia 45. May you all have many happy years and nautical miles of safe sailing ahead of you. Adventure away!
Oh wow. Congratulations to you Oscar! Whether you’ve actually put in your order or made a decision on what you’re going to order - congratulations! Carolyn and I know what it feels like when you’ve got a good decision in the bag; a mix of being proud of the way you’ve applied wisdom and judgement, happiness with the prospect of the adventures that lie ahead and relief that you’ll be in a vessel that is safe, comfortable and so well designed to support those adventures. Congratulations!
Regards, Rick and Carolyn.
Beautiful!
Yep. Love your boat. Always wanted to learn to sail. Once I finish my degree and get a job, I'll be getting one for sure! If you ever need an extra hand with a big crossing, my girlfriend and I would Volunteer 😇!!
Good plan. Please send photo of girlfriend. LOL! 😄
@@SailingSnowGum 😂 Shes a very beautiful woman! 🙃
Whats your email? Ill send you a pic of us! lol
@@SpaceVetMike1 Good answer, but you would get more brownie points if you wrote, ‘She’s a very intelligent and beautiful woman.’ 😉
@@SpaceVetMike1 No pic required. I’ve found you online, but with your real name. czcams.com/video/V5KhPeo7iiA/video.html
Very nice and thank you!
That blank panel on the right at the nav station would make a great spot for a television. Sunken area mounted on arm so it could be swung out. I know TV not for all, but maybe a good spot, good power supply?
Hi Rick, what really surprised me is that you don’t have any silent fans in any of the cabins or saloon, I am not referring to the extraction system for the air exchange…. Simple low power ventilation fans, caframo cabin fans are used in all ultra high end yachts like Oyster and Halberg Rassy and for pure purpose of air movement and condensation no more 😉!!!
Hi Michael. Let’s tease this apart. :-) Oysters and Hallberg-Rassys are made with GRP hulls, using Divinycell or the like for lightweight lamination strength, along with some, but not much, insulation value. Not much, but every bit helps. 🙂 Aluminium boats are made from, yep, good ol’ or bad ol’ aluminium, depending on which of its magical properties we feel inclined to admire today. Good, because it’s fricken strong and ductile and your boat won’t sink. Bad, because it’s an amazingly effective heat conductor, which can easily cause condensation. Good, because it’s an amazingly effective heat conductor which ensures your boat stays linked to the sea’s temperature and thereby comfortable. Ok, interesting, but let’s focus on condensation, because apart from making water out of thick air, what use is it? Several actually, but let’s focus.
All boats will be subject to condensation in circumstances that are right for them and any salesman who tells you otherwise is full of shot. Ha! Apple won’t write shit with swipy writing.
If the boat has moisture laden air in it and that air comes into contact with cold aluminium or cold GRP, the moisture will condense if the temperature of the moisture laden air at the interface between the air and the structure drops, causing the air’s relative humidity at that location to rise to a level where temperature and dew point are proximal. Or, cold things cause condensation.
The little bit of insulation value in a laminated GRP/divinycell hull will change the condensation equation compared with a bare aluminium hull. The GRP hull will need to be in somewhat colder conditions before condensation becomes apparent on the hull sides. Remember, while some GRP hull laminations include insulation, it is buried in the middle of the laminate. The inboard surface of the hull is uninsulative polyester. It sucks heat out of the air, enough, to cause condensation. Not as much as bare aluminium, but enough. Bare aluminium would be a nightmare, in the right (or should we say wrong) conditions. Think ‘fishing boat’. So, insulate it! 🙂
Different pleasure yacht builders use different strategies to deal with condensation, including avoiding its formation in the first place where possible and then dealing with runoff where necessary. If the boat you’re looking at doesn’t have both strategies in place, don’t buy it. I studied Hallberg-Rassy’s approach closely. The divinycell I’ve mentioned helps delay the onset of condensation as conditions become more difficult and reduces the rate of heat transfer through the hull if they persist. It slows condensation down. The second approach Hallberg-Rassy use is to line the inboard hull surface with stand-off slats, made from nice, good looking, insulative wood. This is also part of their approach of delivering maximum interior space. Why would they install expensive stand-off slats if the sides of the hull were always going to be dry and having your clothes leaning up against the bare hull didn’t matter? 🧐🤨. The hull sides won’t be dry, depending on where you go and when. 😕
Garcia make a pleasure yacht out of completely different materials (much stronger) and so use completely different strategies. One example - tons of insulation, on the interior of the hull this time rather than sandwiched in the middle of a lay-up. From some way under the waterline and deeper the hull is uninsulated, to allow desirable heat exchange with the sea. The real problem with condensation is horizontal surfaces (much more so than the hull), so these are also insulated. The living area is a suspended box, held slightly away from the hull by a frame. You don’t get as much interior open space with a Garcia (also because of the deck saloon configuration), but lots of storage is the big compensation for that. The Garcia is very well set up for handling any condensation runoff in the bilges, which will happen if you go to very cold places and do foolish things like breathe or cook. It’ll happen in the HR too. Is it as well set up for draining? Other GRP boats? 🧐😳
But Michael you asked about fans. Well, we didn’t like how they looked. LOL! Nah, we’ll get ’em later if we need them but so far we haven’t.
Ventilation is important but there has to be exhaust to the outside or there’s no point to it. Show me the window in a Hallberg-Rassy that can be left open when it’s raining, in a marina, with wind coming from astern? The Garcia has the galley window and also the companionway doors which can be left ajar, closed the wrong way, to create an excellent, full height, rain resistant vent. With this approach we have controlled condensation very satisfactorily. However, while spending winter in rain sodden Cherbourg we are using a Meaco DD8L Zambezi dehumidifier to take us to another level altogether. Highly recommended. Intermittent use at low level makes a huge difference between ambient and interior humidity levels. 😀
There’s so much more that could be said about condensation. Happy to discuss. Regards, Rick.
@@SailingSnowGum Hi Rick, though being a Pom myself but I work on composites for over 30 years, also working for X Yachts of Denmark in one off builds also JS Denmark for many years.... so not to blow my own trumpet I do know what a yacht is☺️ ..... this has nothing to do with hull laminates and hull materials and R values (Insulation!) it has to do with movement of static air, I am not sure if you have AC in the yacht but this also helps for drying the air and forcing dried air into the cabins, hence the lack of AC controlled environments it is very important to move the air in a confined living space, ie circulate the air.
A yacht is a static air environment especially when not sailing forward, weather its 45 ft or a 100 ft yacht, if you use a fully controlled AC unit throughout the yacht then the problem is reduced, but if you use a diesel webasto type heater feeding water radiators placed though out the yacht then this is going to make the muggy air linger and give 3-4 years the smell will be short of a wet dog.
Ps I really enjoy all your videos and would like to hear of your responses from Garcia and post commissioning support on the issues you have bought up.
The Fans available today are very silent and do as they say on the tin, but hey agreed they are not pretty, but neither is a Garcia ;-)
@Michael Holmes Hi Michael. With my earlier reply I was going to write, ’Hi Michael et al, for others who read this who are not filled in on condensation.’ I’m glad you mentioned your link with X-Yachts. I visited the factory during my tour in 2018 and was super impressed, in all respects. Beautiful design and build. As I left I said to Kræn, ‘You’ve made my life harder. I wasn’t expecting to be so impressed.’
Agreed - AC is a distributed dehumidifier, provided the condensate is deposited overboard. All the better if it has reverse-cycle heating. But it’s not an option for anchoring long term in remote locations where solar is the primary power source.
Agreed - moving dried air around is a very good practice. We run our dehumidifier intermittently and open many hatches and lift mattresses to expose underbed and underfloor areas. Airing out heat and moisture from the underfloor engine compartment is important after a motoring run too.
Agreed - our Webasto ducted coolant heating system needs to be used with understanding and caution. When switched off, cooling of air in the underfloor areas could result in condensation, if conditions are right. We don’t use it much, so far, but we’ll tolerate its foibles and use it together with a dehumidifier to enjoy our time in the Arctic. It’s very effective at what it does, including heating water. There are better ways to skin each one of these cats but the Webasto does a pretty good job of skinning them all.
Agreed - Caframo fans are the ones we’ll get in due course. Garcia weren’t offering them so we didn’t tick the box.
Not Agreed - Caframo fans will make zero difference to the only interesting condensation event we’ve detected, which has been droplets forming on the cold hull plates under the front cabin bed, in a place where only a single layer of ply with 4 x 10cm vent holes is separating the mattresses from the space above the hull. Note that this was during steady rain for days in cold, wintry Cherbourg. Clearly, body moisture and heat was making its way down there, leading to condensation against the hull plates, well below. I’m looking at strategies to defeat this, but already just running the dehumidifier in the room during the day with the mattresses lifted has completely eliminated the incidence. Ceiling corner fans would help a little during this treatment, but on their own, nope.
I’ll agree that fans are wonderful things and that quiet ones like Caframo are top-of-the-line, but I’ll baulk at the suggestion that they can stop condensation deep under a berth in the absence of windows being opened, or something else being done to actually reduce the moisture load in the air. 🙂
If I’m missing something, do tell. I’m a scientist and learning from others with interesting thoughts to offer is the key. 🙂 Perhaps you could run a check - would you be able to talk with your X-Yachts colleagues and ask what kinds of condensation they’ve experienced upon taking them into the high Arctic. Or are they too pretty for that? 😆
Regards, Rick.
This is my dream.
Hi Raimondas. For us it started as an idea of what we could do after retiring from our long careers. The idea became a plan, followed by tests and investigations. Then more plans until we were ready for decisive actions, then follow- through and here we are. :-) Covid-19 made it more complicated along the way, but we travelled around the world anyway. Now we are planning our next steps, which might involve quarantine in some countries when we arrive, by sailboat! 🙂
Great storage in the galley/salon area. Without being too personal, how much stowage for clothes etc is there in the cabin areas?
Plenty. We’ve been living on the boat for over a year and there’s lots of clothes storage we’ve not started using yet. 🙂
Hi guys, great boat, really nice. Question, do you have a water maker and a generator?
Hi Brett. We have neither. We plan to install a Schenker Zen 30 watermaker when we are getting ready to cross large oceans. Low power consumption, low running costs, low noise, small footprint. In the meantime our 500 litre water tanks are all we need. During quarantine in Jersey we experimented with how little water we needed. Result - 10 litres per day average, over the 25 days we were there, including showers every couple of days. Our 1200W of solar panels and lithium batteries obviate the need for a generator, given that we don't have air-conditioning. Unless it's really cloudy our batteries are back up to 100% by mid morning, from 88% or so at dawn. And this is with using a microwave and induction hotplate for almost all cooking. We've just had five days of rainy weather; the lowest our batteries got to was 65%, so we used gas for breakfast one morning, to help the batteries a bit. Yesterday, with a bit of 'partly cloudy' weather, the batteries were back up to 100%. Rather than a generator, look at an Integrel On-Engine Generator, being a very efficient alternator installed on the diesel engine, which can produce 900 amps of charge. Our sister ship Idril has one, along with twice as much lithium as we have, and no gas. A great system, but we like having gas AND electric cooking. :-)
I see some GE45 have washing machines installed
Were you tempted?
Hi Sunny. We opted for a preinstallation, where everything needed for a washing machine is installed, just without the machine itself. Down the track we plan to install either a Soba 3.5kg or Candy 4kg washing machine. In the meantime a 10 litre bucket is our low-tech system. We might upgrade to a 40 litre dry bag, which would work really well.
NIce! What kind of solar panel do you have? :) What's your plans where to go? :)
Hi Sajko. Solar panels are 3 x Sunpower Maxeon 3, at 400 watts each. So 1200 watts total. Re sailing plans, well, Covid is having a big say in that. Good destinations will be countries that don’t have much of it and are happy to have visitors. Any suggestions? 🤔
@@SailingSnowGum well if i would purchase such a boat my first destination as test run would be Norway maybe even in winter since insulation is good on that boat 😎 do you take part of that world rally La Grande Yachting is organising? Can you show some output of power in the middle of day to see how much power solar is really generating?
@@sajkoPL Norway this summer is on our list, but will they let people in?? 😳
We’ve been pleasantly surprised with how well the solar panels are working, here in the depths of winter. The sun is so low in the sky, if you can see it through the clouds and rain. There’s a big jump in performance when the sun is clear to shine, as you’d expect. But it’s asking too much of solar in winter to match our energy needs. I’ll get some numbers from a good, sunny day.
@@sajkoPL Here in Cherbourg in mid winter, from our 1200 watt array, the best peak we’ve had is 504 watts and the worst peak is 63 watts. Daily watt/hour figures are more useful. Best - 870W/h. Worst - 150W/h. 🙂
0:25
Bucket for water
Have you installed a water-maker?
That bucket has fresh water collected while waiting for hot water to reach the shower head. It takes about two litres each time. Four litres is handy for washing some clothes; a good practice for an ocean crossing. We plan to install a watermaker down the track, when we need it. It’ll probably be a Schenker Zen 30. Quiet, low power consumption, small footprint and a single membrane for low maintenance costs. Garcia were helpful in installing all of the infrastructure needed for a watermaker; mounting platforms for the pump and the membrane unit, sea water inlet, fresh water delivery to the tank, etc.
@@SailingSnowGum
Thank you
Where is it to be fitted?
@@Timothy_Pitt The watermaker pressure pump and membrane unit will fit under the floor and under the bed, respectively, in the port-aft cabin. There’s plenty of room for them. Other owners who’ve installed Schenker watermakers report they can hardly hear them (or not at all) while sailing. I’ve heard the same wrt the Dessalator systems installed by Garcia as original equipment, though these do have higher noise levels and power consumption. They make a lot of water though, and quickly.
04:45
Nav station
Right-hand panel is blank
Any comment on this, please?
Hi Sunny. I’m sure you’ve seen that earlier models of this design have an array of switches on the right-hand panel, for transfer pumps, bilge pumps, etc. These controls have now been incorporated into a programmable CAN-bus based system that uses a touch screen for user management of most of the DC systems on board. This is the screen you see in the video, under the VHF radio, to the right of the chartplotter. I think I call it ‘the Scheiber screen’, after the manufacturer, based in France. We decided to leave the right-hand panel blank, so we could freely install any future equipment control panels. Or for sticky notes. Ergonomically, having all the screens and controls on the front panel works well, even if we’re sitting on the starboard side of the saloon table.
The CAN-bus Scheiber system provides some very interesting features. Most are helpful, some are really cool, while a few are just plain wacky. A couple of examples of cool are: it’s possible to program groups of 12V devices to all switch on or off with one touch, such as lights or fans or pumps; all the 12V devices around the boat can be activated from the touch screen and additional touch screens can be placed where you want them; and, figuring out how to program the thing makes you feel like you’ve achieved Jedi Master of the Universe status, which is fun. :-)
As for the wacky aspects of the Scheiber system, well they’re just typical of a system that’s designed by programmers who don’t sail for non-programmers who do sail. None of these ‘features’ are showstoppers, not even close, but they do make the eyes roll. They’ll be sorted out in time, when the right people at Garcia and Scheiber get their heads together. I’ve given them a list to start with. 🙄🤪
@@SailingSnowGum
Very interesting report
Thank you
raise the periscope ;)
Ha ha. 😄 Yes, in this rain it does feel like being in a submarine sometimes. But submarines don’t have a view like this! We like the view very much. Another thing, the floor doesn’t squeak as I walk around. The thick insulated floor boards help with that. Rick.
@@SailingSnowGum I like this weather)
@@paulil Compared to summer in Australia last year, with bushfires everywhere, we like this weather too! 🙂