Winter arrives

Well,
Winter came. It was down below zero F during the last weekend and I got to test out the heating setup on the boat. I have a dealer installed Webasto 5500 on the boat. The reverse cycle heat that I was using isn't working now that water temperatures are 37F which is too cold to make any heat. So, these are turned off now until the water gets above 40f again.

We knew the Webasto does not heat the boat uniformly. Most of its heat exits in the port AFT bedroom, the main toilet, the rest goes between the starboard AFT bed room and the main cabin. The forward toilet and the forward berth get almost nothing.
So, the forward cabin went down in to the low 30s. The main cabin is around 50 and the rear are around 55F. The engine compartment was in high 30s. I did remove both side inspection panels for the engine allowing some heat to enter the engine compartment.

I want to stay on the boat and this isn't enough heat for me. So, I purchased two Westmarine 1500W space heaters (99 bucks ea), one for fwd berth, one for main cabin.

These pull 10.6A at full power and 6.5A at 3/4 power. The Jeanneau has a single 15A circuit so I can't run both at 4/4 or run a microwave at same time either, its all on the same 15A circuit. I run them both at 3/4 each which is about a 13A draw,

The Westmarine heaters are not putting out the heat on the box, 10.6A is around 1166 watts, not 1500W.

Anyway, with the heaters and the Webasto, the boat is managing to keep 65-68F in the main cabin and 40s in fwd cabin so thats working for me. I sleep in the starboard AFT cabin which is cosy. The boat is warm enough to be in a t-shirt when its single digits outside.

BTW, opening the engine compartment results in a good cold draft (not good) from the rear of the boat in the main cabin. I ended up just removing one panel rather than both panels from each aft berth.

B&G WIFI-1 stopped working

I upgraded all the software on the boat electronics I could about 2 months ago. That means V4.5 for my Zeus 2 plotter and anything else that was recommended.
After doing this, the WIFI-1 stopped working. By this, I mean, the plotter couldn't see it. It was however, still transmitting on the SSD I setup but the Zeus refused to acknowledge it was even connected on the bus. I tried shutting down the boat power to reboot it, no joy.
The dealer ended up replacing it with another one and that worked straight away. I don't believe the other one was broken but this is what it took to get the plotter to see it again.
I can now connect the boat to a WIFI hot spot, download updates (which I did) as well as predict wind weather straight to the plotter. I just have one WIFI-1 on the boat so it's the hotspot or reconfigure it so my tablet can be used as a remote plotter display.

First haul out

I hauled out the boat before the winter rush. The dealer came and repaired the forward holding tank release valve. I had the anodes replaced and the bottom painted with Pacifica Plus. The marina service yard did that work. You cannot paint the bottom yourself in New Jersey, you need a license.
Total cost was 1900 US for this. I'm planning on leaving the boat in the water over the winter and staying on it a little and sailing when I can.

Leaking holding tanks on Jeanneau 439

First major problem with the boat and the fitting which adapts the gravity pipe from the tank to the thru hull sewage valve is leaking. It's basically a part that screws in to the thru hull and has a smaller diameter fitting which the pipe from the tank attaches to. It's leaking in the threads between the thru hull and that fitting.

Yep, there was a "weird" smell in the boat since it was delivered. I thought it was the perfumed plastic bags we were using initially but to my horror discovered that wasn't it. The holding tank for the forward v-berth toilet was leaking sewage in to the hull of the boat and it was pooling in the areas under the floor boards. I had the holding tank emptied once I realized this and then spent about 5 hours cleaning it up which I hope I never have to do again. Horrible, horrible job. Of course, it continued to leak in to the hull after emptying the tanks so cleaning it was a waste of time, it just pooled again.

I called Riverside Yachts of NJ who sold me the boat and act as my warranty contact. They informed me that it was an ongoing issue with Jeanneau and Beneteau boats. Apparently the factory used the wrong glue on the holding tank valve to thru hull fitting on both toilets and it hardens to a varnish, is brittle and basically then starts to leak in to the hull. The fix is to replace both fittings with new ones and a more flexible glue. Why the dealer/Jeanneau are waiting for their new boat customers to experience this first hand rather than preemptively fix the boats before they are sold is totally beyond me.

So, Riverside are coming to the marina and doing the fixes and cleaning the boat on Wednesday this week. To their credit, they are acting very quickly on this. I called them Monday, they are fixing it on Wednesday (tomorrow)

This isn't how I thought my first weeks of owning a new Jeanneau yacht would go for me. Lets hope it gets better from here...

The photos show where the leak is. It's a slow leak, there was "plenty" still left in the tank. Whats weird is it drains from there in to a rib in the hull strength area and pools inside the rib which is hollow. It overflows from there on each side through the drainage hole. This is totally messed up and it's draining in both directions! Water is supposed to flow backwards in to the bilge not forwards in to the v-berth. You can see in general, the water does not move easily to the bilge with the hull design. It gets trapped in each section because the hole to empty each section is basically too high. The hole seems to be not on the center line but its to the port side and because the hull is curved, it's then above the low point in that section which looks like a big design issue if I was designing boats. The boat is supposed to be a dry bilge but once water/sewage gets into it, it will not drain out to the bilge without you helping it.

Photos...

It leaks "forward" in to the bilge area in the v-berth from the rib. It's actually pooling inside the rib and overflowing on to each side of the rib. The hole is centered here

This is the bilge pump on the top area with the area just in front of the v-berth door under it. You can see the low point of the lower section is below the drainage pipes between sections so it pools rather than drains.

This is the actual leak as best I can tell. This is in the v-berth toilet.

Second visit to boat after deposit

We went to see the boat again today in the yard and put down the remainder of the cash portion of the purchase price. I spent time on the boat, looking at the systems it ships with.

Electrical System

The boat has 1 service battery (for starting engine) and 4 house batteries for supplying 12VDC to the various systems on the boat. I think the batteries are AGM with 110aH so 440aH total meaning 220aH usable... The boat has a voltage isolator and a 60AMP charger. There is no invertor so none of the 110VAC devices will work unless we're on shore power. These devices currently include a microwave, two AC/heating units and the water heater. Nothing else needs 110VAC on the boat so far. Charging the batteries is done using the engine alternator or shore power. I'm not sure if the 60AMP charger I saw is just for shore power. The alternator may drive that also.

There is a small TV on a wall with it's own 400W invertor to power it.

I already own 2 Honda EU2000i generators. These can be used on the boat to charge batteries on the way. A 60AMP charger should pull around 900 watts (15V x 60) during peak charging. I'd prefer to run the generator closer to 1500 watts charging, it's more efficient.

It's not diesel so I'd need to store gasoline on the boat which I don't like. 5 gallons of gasoline though is a lot of power. One of my EU2000i's is converted for propane and uses about 1lb of propane for 1kwh of power.

Our batteries are 4 x 110aH or 440Ah or 12V x 440aH = 5.2kwh. We can draw about 2.6kwh for 50% depth of discharge. That's 2.6lbs of propane to replace that power. I estimate that will take about 3 hours to charge. I have a test where 5 hours charged 4.4kwh or 880wh per hour with a 55amp charger in my house.

Navigation Equipment.

It has B&G gear, a Zues 2 9 inch screen outside, two small MFDs, an autopilot control and a VHF radio (V50). There is also a chain link counter and electric cutlass.

Refitting plan.

I will be living part time on this boat and sailing most evenings and weekends when weather is good. Staying on the boat cuts my commute to the office time from an hour each way to about 15 minutes. This is an expensive purchase so being able to sail it as often as possible and the commute time savings (an apartment in the city close to the office basically) is a big deal to me.

First purchases:

• AIS Transmitter (B&G V50 is receive only)
• EPIRB (ACR V4)
• Life Raft (Viking 8 man)
• Dry gear for working on deck. Probably Dry suits for the family.
• Inmersat Phone dock (external aerial) with Satellite Wifi or just buy an Iridium Hotspot for about the same money for weather and email. I already own an inmersat satphone 2 and a satphone pro.
• Self inflating life vests.
• Drogue for emergency steering and slowing boat down in swell/heavy weather.
• Self activating fire system for engine room.
• Emergency hole plugging system.
• Some kind of gasoline/propane/diesel high capacity pump, ~6000 gph.

I'm holding off on the following:

• Victron Multiplus 12V/3000W/60AMP invertor/charger. This would allow batteries to supplement shore power and split the system so all A/C power comes from invertor/batteries and shore power normally just charges batteries. I own a Xantrex ProSine 1800 which would work well as an invertor but with only 200AH of usable power from current batteries, running 110VAC is prohibitive. 600aH total would give me 500aH usable which is over double my current aH.
• Victron Lithiums with BMS to replace current batteries. When they wear out then I'll consider it and hopefully they will be cheaper then. They have 12V/200aH ones which I'm not sure will fit in current battery buckets.
• Solar panels (300W at least).
• Wind generator.
• Fiberglass propane tanks.
• SSB Radio and Pactor modem (I have an extra class ham license and a KX3 radio right now).

The current plan to receive the boat is late April. We want to do some serious sailing lessons with a captain once we get it also.