Heat & New Lazy Jack bag

My Skipper has been doing a lot of research regarding my Webasto hear Airtop5000 to be exact.  Previously it appeared to work ok, but in fact it delivered warm air to my rear cabins and sometimes the saloon, but no chance of getting any heat further forward.  Which is where to be honest the owners are likely to want it in the Master Cabin.  New models are fitted with two heaters one entirely serving the Master Cabin.

However, as I said my skipper has done his homework.  The Airtop5000 has an overheat cut off sensor and as the fan on the unit is not capable of moving the volume of hot air away from the unit fast enough it overheats, the sensor picks that up and the unit is shut down.  The increase in volume of air flow through a 90mm dia duct compared to a 60mm dia duct is more than 50% again.  So my skipper is going to replace the undersized duct work from beneath the chart table to the Master Cabin with the larger 90mm duct, at the point of change he's going to install an in line fan controlled by a variable speed switch enabling him to draw the air away from the heater unit, stopping it from overheating and deliver it where it's wanted to the front.  He's also got a number of thermal socks that go over the duct work, that is designed to keep the air hot within the duct work.

So this winter having serviced the unit and replaced the burner unit, I went back on.  Only to discover that an error code shown on the panel was leading to a new problem with the fan.  It was soon discovered that the plastic shrouds at the end had been put on the wrong way round preventing the fan from spinning.  Once switched and re-assembled, the unit fired up pumping hot air by the bucket load in to the stern locker.  This was a bit of a eureka moment for my skipper who was expecting to spend a few more hours getting it to fire up.

Now my skipper has to check that the ducting in the stern locker has become crushed preventing airflow from moving forward.  Then he'll add the thermal socks to the 60mm ducting that serves the rear cabins and the heads off the saloon.  From there he'll strip out the existing 60mm ducting to the Master Cabin and heads and replace it with 90mm and surround it in the thermal sock, and add the new inline fan.  Once this has been completed, warm or even hot air should reach the Master Cabin like the manufacturer had intended but failed to do and has never done before.

I'll keep you posted as how he gets on with the inline fan and the new duct work.

Allowing the unit to run, my skipper then turned his attention to fitting the new Lazy Jack bag he had made locally.  Now imagine strong winds, larger areas of cloth and one man trying to fit it to the boom and you can imagine the picture.  Still he's done this before and slid the bag down the boom and tied each of the hoops, then put sail ties around it to stop the wind from shaking it to pieces.  The bag like my jib are all looking crispy clean, so its just the main to go before my first trip at Easter.  I understand the plan is to head for Weymouth using the six hours of ebbing tide to assist, guests may be present, which is a good thing especially as its a colleague that my skipper & crew have done number of races with including the Fastnet.  Only hope the weather doesn't mar the plans.