Adrianp

I've been to see them and they are giving me good advice. Thanks for the recommendation.

Us multihull owners love our redundancy for our redundancy! As the alternator belt drives the internal waterpump, we do need to have some kind of spare onboard in case one throws a bearing.

Thanks, That's some really good advice that has got me rethinking what I'm actually trying to do. I don't really need the charging capacity of the stock Hitachi, and I have 3 of them (1 on the engine, one off the other engine and one spare), but the charging capacity of the Balmar is more essential if the sun doesn't shine. We killed a set of AGMs in Tonga when is rained for almost 5 weeks straight, so no solar, and our generator died (RIP you POS!). I'll start my research on those Leece Neville alternators as we have plenty of room around the engine.

On our sailing cat we've upgraded one of our alternators on our Yanmar 3YM30 to a grunty Balmar 175a XT alternator, Balmar external regulator and Serpentine belt kit. This system works well and charges the Lithium house battery. The other engine still has the standard 60a Hitachi alternator with a single V-Belt and only charges the start batteries for both engines and works fine for this, but now I have different belts and regulation on each of the engine, so having a spare alternator is a bit of a pain. I'd like to upgrade the standard alternator to something with a external regu

These are the LiFePO4 cells that we have just got for Lady Nada - 8 x Winston 300ah cells to give 600ah @12V. They get some pretty good abuse in this video without catastrophic failure.

A few more photos of NV from last winter in Tonga and Fiji, where we buddy boated with them. The 4.2m draft and small motor (40hp??) limited her a bit and they needed to follow us into most anchorages, with me relay the depth on the VHF to them. Going into Vulaga, the last part of the reef pass is only about 4-5m deep in Coral and I ended up swimming in front of them to guide them between bombies! Its not my choice of boat for the islands but they got there and did it! Its since been sold to new owners who are keeping it in Fiji.

Most of the Multis I race on use the setup you have pictured but with a block to prevent chafe.

The are Country Specific, so they the right rescue centre get the alarm. Our Boat came with an Ozzie one and it could not be registered with MNZ as it alerts Ozzie if activated. We brought a NZ one in the end but carry the Ozzie one as a backup. After a lot of emails, I managed to get the details updated of the Ozzie one so that they know who to contact if it goes off half way to Fiji.

We found the Magic 25 kites to be the best as they have put some much development into them. I think they are only 65m2, where that Greeny is almost 100m2, but just way more efficient.

Is that Big Greeny from High-n-Fibre? Massive sail but not the fastest we found.

Almost had a collision with a very new 50ft launch last Sunday who thought it was acceptable to pass us at 12kts when he was 20m away from us. I motioned 5 knots and he motioned back 12kts - completely clueless about the rules. Can't wait for him to pass us at 18kts next time!

I'm used to reading long, poorly written Govt/Public documents but the "Nav Safety Findings" document is a whole new level of poorly written. It’s like they forgot to hit the spelling/grammar check when they finally finished the document. It’s so confusingly written, I'm not sure what they are asking for. They have gone overboard on useless statistics too. I can't see the reasoning for increasing the 12kt harbour limit to 18kts is safer - 8knots would be the safer speed for reducing the massive wakes coming from the Gin Palaces.

Cockleshell Trophy went to the 10m Cat Exodus https://www.givencats.com/q_getboataspect.cfm?id=9

The Start order was changed a couple of years ago so that the slower divisions start at 9.30, then some at 9.45, and then fast boats at 10am. Used to be fast boats at 10am, and then some divisions 10.05 and then small boats at 10.10. It helps quite a bit to start them just a bit earlier. Makes for spectular sailing too as the fast boats come ripping through the other divisions.