Morgane

‘Morgane’ is my boat, or yacht depending on the circumstances.
Definition – ‘Yacht’ – a small vessel, usually a boat; which becomes a yacht when the owner is trying to sell it or get laid.
Vital statistics
- Design: Trireme 35
- Designer: Francois Charpentier
- LOA: 10.8m (11.5 to the extremities)
- Beam: 3.7m
- Draught: 1.8m
- Displacement: 7.5T
- Gross tonnage: 12.69
- Mast: 14m
- Construction: Steel
- Launched: 1985
- Engine: Beta Marine 28
- Fuel: 450 litres diesel – 400 litres in a keel tank, 50 litres under the cockpit
- Water: 400 litres
- Cabin heater: Refleks
- Cooker: Gas – two burners and oven
- Autopilot – Simrad tiller pilot
- Windvane – Aries
Sails
The white sails are by Quantum, now Ullman, in Cape Town and the spinnaker is of unknown pedigree.
- Main with four reefs – the fourth reef acts as the storm trysail – Full main 26 square metres
- Several hank-on head sails – from 50 to 6 square metres
- Spinnaker – 108 square metres
Electrical
- Batteries: 500 Ah
- Wind turbine: Rutland 914i – DL 300 Diversion charge controller
- Solar panels: 1x 90W rigid panel on doger roof, 2x portable, flexible, 30W – Genasun MPPT controller
- Stirling alternator controller
- Battery monitor: Merlin Smartgauge
- LED lighting throughout, with red light system in selected areas
Electronics
NMEA-2000 network
- GPS: Furuno GP-33
- Multi-purpose display: RD-33
- Wind/weather: Furuno PB-200
- Depth/Speed/Temperature transducer: Furuno DST200
- Actisense NGT-1 – NMEA 2000 to USB gateway
- Actisense NGW-1 – NMEA 2000 to NMEA 0183 conversion
Standalone or NMEA-0183 networked
Computer
Hardware
- Nettop mini PC
- Logitech unified wireless keyboard and trackball controller
- 12V Proview monitor
Software
- MS Windows 7
- MaxSea TimeZero and Jeppersen MapMedia 3d vector charts
- OpenCPN running various homemade charts
- OziExplorer – again for various scanned and homemade charts – handles large tracks much better than OCPN
- Franson GPSGate – Serial port multiplexer
- GPS Utility – for sorting out the hundreds of waypoints that you accumulate along the way
- WxtoImg – Weather satellite image decoding software
The navigation and comms computer is interfaced to the instruments via the Actisense gateways. The NGT-1 N2K (NMEA-2000) to USB provides the primary input to MaxSea and the NGW feeds the Franson GPSGate multiplexer that in turn provides NMEA-0183 stream to OpenCPN, Oziexplorer, WxtoImg, etc.. I swapped out the HDD for solid-state drive for better performance and reliability.
In total the computer has six USB connectors and they are all in use, as follows:
- Logitec wireless devices
- Bluetooth dongle – for pactor modem
- NGT interface
- NGW interface
- APT-06 Weather satellite receiver
- Versper Watchmate AIS receiver
Communications
Harware
- Yeasu FT-857D wideband communications transceiver
- Icom IC M425 vhf DSC transceiver
- Vesper Marine Watchmate 850 AIS transponder
- SCS Pactor modem for email via Sailmail over SSB
Software
We use Sailmail as our email provider of choice. It costs around $250.00 US a year but can be used for any kind of personal communications, we also use Winlink but as that is an amateur service can’t be used for commercial communications; besides it doesn’t have very good coverage in South America.
Weather satellite reception
We receive images from the NOAA polar orbiting weather satellites using the excellent little APT-06 from Wrasse. See my blog entry for more information.
Safety
- Life-jackets with harness and tether
- Jackstays
- horseshoe buoys with lights
- Dan buoy with light and flag
- Liferaft – four man ocean
- Comprehensive medicine chest
- EPIRB – Ocean Safety
Tender “Mini Morgane”
The tender is a home built ply/epoxy built from free plans kindly provided online by Mike Waller Yacht Design called a Pippie 8. Tender power is provided by a pair of 7ft oars.
MS Windows 7?? What’s happend to you old boy? :o)
Haha good point: the problem is that the stronger operating systems are largely ignored by they developers of the specialized communications and navigation software that I use on the boat. You can find stuff out there but your backed right into a corner and have a choice of one, or just have to go without 🙂