Everyone has some things they like and dislike about their boat. There are probably two things that I can think of on Mariadz. The first is the wheel size compared to the gap in the cockpit. The only way around the wheel is to go up on the cushions as there is no leg-width gap between the wheel and the seat. The second is the amount of exterior storage in lockers etc. This is minimal to the say the least and a lot less than we were used to on our previous Dufour 455.
In fact the outside storage space is the chain locker and the lazerette. We had previously partially addressed this by moving the life raft from its dedicated locker above the aft stateroom to a rail mount. This gave us some space for the storage of flares, lines etc. Now clearly you cant go around randomly making new lockers on an old boat so we needed to get imaginative or more precisely steal others people’s imaginative ideas. One of these we saw on discovery yachts. A number of these have Fortress anchors as their kedge anchor setup, and after some research I had decided that this sounded the most sensible way for us to have a setup that could work for us with a twenty five tonne boat at cruising weight. On the discovery boats, the kedge anchor was rail mounted which meant that it was mostly out of the way but also available quickly if needed. The advantages were offset by the fact that you had a sharp, hard anchor that you could easily fall into but is this much worse than the pushpit rail?
However, the standard Moody 54 doesn’t have much pushpit space with two liferings, a danbuoy and, for us, a life raft already on there. With the davits also restricting options and two two aft seats taking up more room, it is a little tight to say the least.
Another issue related to safety which was that the pushpit stopped before the clutches for the head sail and staysail. This meant that you were adjacent to the lifelines when you wanted to use these clutches. A more solid barrier would be safer. Maria and I agreed to extend the pushpit by four feet to the next stanchion
which gives us more room and a safer aft area. This would also provide more rigidity to the pushpit when combined with the reinforcement we put in the stern section previously when we added braces from the davits to the pushpit. The final item we needed to think about was the repositioning of the ensign required by the new solar panels. This was also intended to be rail mounted although I was keen to go back to a wooden pole rather than the stainless one we had previously.
Once again, East Coast Stainless were asked to do this wotk and once again this needed to be fitted in amongst a lot of other work that they have. I guess that is the problem when you are good and reasonably priced. We are happy to wait and very pleased with the result.
Unfortunately, the work was a bit more than moving an angled stanchion and joining in a couple of tubes. This was because we found some old damage on the stanchion itself which had a large dent. This wouldnt be easily repaired and we knew that we would always notice the damage if we had just tried to repair it. To be fair the cost of shaping a longer piece of metal rather than joining to the existing curved stanchion was reasonably similar anyway. 
The finished job looks like it has always been there, just waiting for safety lines to be adjusted so that we can finish this part of the job. The best part is you cant see the join between the new and old elements of the pushpit, very happy with the workmanship again!
So what will we do with all the space created? We already need to attach the ensign and putting it on the toe rail would probably cause issues with the lines running to the stern cleat so this is mounted to the pushpit. We also have the anchor setup for the fortress and finally we have agreed, read Maria has decided (!), to add a holder for our Lotus grill so that it can be rail mounted. This will be an adjustable mount that will allow us to stow it and then fix it for when we are having a BBQ. More pictures to follow as these get fitted.
original hydraulic rams, Bennetts in America. After sending various pictures and measurements, they were able to find the rams I needed (HL12CDA). I then had to wait for the next available transport to the UK, unless of course I wanted it delivered airmail which would be double the cost the of the rams themselves! I waited. The rams arrived and were ready for fitting and then I discussed with Lindsay when we could go about fitting them and getting the system working again. In the interim, Matt, a marine engineer and very good friend of ours, was visiting and I picked his brain. He persuaded me to do the ram swap myself and actually this transpired to be a lot easier than I imagined. I then needed to add hydraulic fluid (automatic transmission fluid) into the reservoir and bleed the system by using it and adjusting the flow to eliminate any air left in the system.
Most of the pipes are metal sheaved flexible pipes but there is one copper pipe and unfortunately the (olive) joint was faulty and hydraulic fluid was squirting out of it and making pretty patterns in my lazerette. I took a look at this with Lindsay at Seapower and we discussed how to resolve the problem. The sensible decision was to replace the copper pipe with a new stainless steel flexible pipe. I went to the local specialists, Pirtek. After one false start, when i pressurised the system and the new joint failed spraying hydraulic fluids everywhere, we were able to pressure test the remade pipe and get the hydraulics sorted. I was back to being able to lift the platform but not drop it. Most importantly, after nipping up a couple of joints, we don’t leak even a drop of hydraulic fluid.
We wanted to have something that you could brace yourself against, for when you are working at the mast. Although with in-mast furling, you do spend less time at the mast than you would with the lazy jack system we had previously. An added advantage would be that this could also be somewhere that we could store our fenders, rather than on the pushpit or along the decks. We looked at a few designs and were keen to have something that we could hold ourselves against while still being able to reach the mast and also use the winch on the mast if necessary. It would also provide a useful hand hold when walking along the deck. I noticed this when I was walking back when they were placed there for show and naturally grabbed it for support. 🙂
solid base for the solar and also allows us to have three large but lightweight (240W) panels which were 
. We think this is a sensible amount of solar for a large, power-hungry boat although we will be also be looking at further ways to reduce our consumption. An alternative would have been to have a small wind turbine fitted to the boat. You will see this on a number of cruising boats but to get a good charge you need some wind, normally in excess of 20knots for any meaningful contribution. Maria and I discussed this and decided that we would generally prefer to be in an area sheltered from wind if possible. The other disadvantage of wind turbines is that they are quite noisy and are also likely to cast a shadow over solar panels that would impact the solar performance so a mixed solution may also not be great. So it was agreed we would go with a solar array matched in Watts to the amp hours of our batteries (720W and 880Ah of battery power). Reason number five and the best reason! although I quite like the helipad idea……
This would mean that we would need to have a certain amount of headroom and the frame couldn’t be mounted directly on top of the davits even if we had wanted that. Another reason it needed to be raised would have been the console on the rib which sits proud above the level of the davits. These reasons, and aesthetics meant we wanted to have something that felt balanced with the boat. We worked with East Coast Stainless on the design and came up with a design that we think works. One of the design questions was about being able to tilt the mechanism, which is more efficient for solar (and creates more downforce, returning to a previous train of thought 😉 ). However, we had concerns that this would be cumbersome, heavier and fail over time as the combination of salt water and stainless welded the tubing to itself. We had exactly this experience with a telescopic boat hook that wouldn’t budge after it 
had been immersed in the sea and left for a few months. As part of this work we lost the Neptune’s fork that used to be mounted here but we had already moved or replaced most of the aerials that were on this and we didn’t want this to still be in place and potentially shade the panels. Some of the aerials were better mounted on the mast anyway. A few were left over which are mounted on plates to the side of the panels, providing a little shading but hopefully not impacting our solar output too much. When the fork was removed the davits suddenly looked naked until the frame went on, it was strange.
had looked at how the power went into the batteries and had agreed with Olly on an MPPT controller which maximises the power going into the batteries by being very clever (please tell me if I am being too technical!). It takes a high voltage as an input and then converts this to the lower voltage required by the batteries. We went with the blue solar set up which is supplied by Victron since we had other Victron equipment and this gets great reviews. It also comes with a Bluetooth communications module which will allow us to monitor the solar array in its own right. All of our on board monitoring would give us a nett effect after any load had been subtracted, unless of course we switch off everything on the boat….so the ability to check the solar in isolation is useful. But it is also useful to know whether your batteries are being charged after considering the current load as a baseline.
ith just one panel connected up and with rain water on the panel, which impacts efficiency, we were getting 4A going into the batteries which is all electricity we don’t have to buy off the marina or fuel for the generator. Now you even get money-saving tips from Mariadz 🙂
Mariadz 