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

• Radar: Furuno 1715
• Fishfinder: Furuno LS-6100

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.