As a new boat owner you learn a lot and fast. Especially when you, like us, took delivery of our new Seawind 1260 and start right away living on it and sailing it around the world. So I will continuously add the solution of little problems we encountered to this page. We did a separate page on rigging.

Active ventilation

As long as I sailed condensation and damp clothes in closets are an issue. And we had our fair share of dampness on Kiskadee. So looking at solutions everybody talked about venting and dehumidifiers. Yes we vent as much as possible, but while sailing that is a limited option. On bigger waves we even had to close the dorades. We needed at least 2 dehumidifiers to get it under control. And I don’t like the amount of energy they use as well as the hoses to get the water out. So I start reading about active ventilation and that is what we did. We also put vents in closet doors and put 13″/80 mm holes between closets or compartments. All well above sea level and not through watertight bulkheads.

• 3 fans, 12v dc, 80mm, 21-29 db of noise, 0.25A (Gdstime)
• new bridge, including fuses, beside the bridge of the steaming etc. lights, behind the coach head.
• after the 20A spare at the DC panel under the nav coach
• about 8 holes between cupboard or compartments,
• 2 passive vents on port side in 2 doors mid section.

IP Camera on Starboard

We didn’t order the engine controls on Starboard side. And yes that is a shortcoming on docking on starboard side. The blind spot is quit big when docking dual-handed. Another challenge is picking up a mooring buoy, especially a Canadian one with no lines attached and only a small ring on top. So we installed a B&G CAM1 camera, directly attached to our Zeus3 MFD, under our starboard spreader.

• 1 B&G CAM1 camera, fixed, day-night camera, 12vdc, 0.2-0.4A
• 1 Ethernet cable from mast to our Zeus3
• 1 power line connected to the new low power bridge.

Part 2 of the solution are headphones. We are now hand signaling aka yelling but we found numerous occasions, that is not working. We search on the web and decided to go for 2 Sena SPH10 sets. Yes another US $200 device but its nickname is the marriage saver.

J-Mount for StarLink

After using a lot of different temporary locations all over the boat we decided to mount the StarLink behind our fixed solar panels at the back of the boat. Good solution with no obstructions, you can feed the antenna cable into the Arch on to the Nav-desk inside. A stainless steel welding job with a little support to the back-end of the solar panel.

Two extra hand rails

We added a few Jack Stays, lines for our safety traveling to the bow or to the boom on top. With the two existing hand rails on the roof you need to put your finger nails into the raining groove when stepping onto the deck and do the same to the front window when approaching the mast. So we added two more hand rails and enjoy this solution ever since.

Flat Batteries

We have a house bank of 2 MasterVolt Lithium’s and the rest of our setup is also MasterVolt (BMS, Charger, Converter etc). On a day we used the anchor winch a lot while marking the anchor chain and had a long night with induction cooking and the use of our Starlink which is also a heavy user. Forget to put the converter off by bedtime.

Woke up at 03 in the morning, the batteries are flat. Oké lets look at it the next morning. Started the engine but we could not see any charging. Luckily the BEP panel worked, so we can do a bit of error checking. Found out in the manual of the battery the safety tripped and opened a relay. Look at it in the BEP and closed it. That was not the right solution we are charging only 1 battery.

The Solution is to search for the main power (high voltage) box. On our Seawind 1260, under the nav seat. Open the box and push the yellow relays down. Now all batteries are connected. With totally completed batteries, 2%, or one charged, one empty, slow charge the batteries by only solar or with 1 engine running stationary.

Refueling

All over Asia, South Pacific, Carieb, rural areas in general refueling is doing by getting diesel at the gas station on the road. Sometimes a fuel dock has a reputation for “bad fuel”

The solution is get 4 * 20 liters jerrycans, mine are plastic, and a siphon pump. We added a foldable wagon to carry the cans. Most gas stations accepted a credit card, most fuel (and water) docks were cash only. US dollars oké, in 10-20-50 dollar bills, clean and new.

Spare parts you tend to forget

• Electrical connectors, female-male. Asked Seawind to supply you with a handful of these connectors they use all over the boat. When replacing a water pump for example, just put the right connector on the new appliance. Otherwise bring a whole set of hit shrinkable connectors, mini heat gun etc.
• Safety rings for stanchions, sea reeling, blocks and rigging etc. Two sizes, 1″ and 1/2 inch. Difficult to obtain while on the move. My spare ones where to big for the small pins and to small for the rigging. Oeps. We used paperclips, cloth hanger, fishing equipment.
• Rubber hose, spare, 10 meters, 16-20 mm, cheap. Combined with duct tape the main ingredient against shaving of mooring lines against concrete walls, on the sea reeling for the lines of the para sailor, to avoid shaving form electric wiring through the bulkhead, on the one place the didn’t caulk it.
• Splicing set and D-splicher and needles an sewing thread. As well as an app our booklet with some help. We did a lot of splicing, it looks complicated but it’s not.
• A big jar of petroleum jelly or in our case from our toilet case we used the vaseline for air leaks on the gross filter on the Yanmars and hatch rubbers.
• Little tube of Sika291i or 3M4000. Those big containers are always hardened when you wanted to re-used them a second, third time.