Busy Busy Busy

   Wow, no updates in a long time. Sorry. So we have been busy saving money for the trip, and at the same time I have been working on repairs, small repairs, major changes, and major rebuilds.
Where to begin. Ah yes, the generator.

   I for a long time had been looking for a generator. I had made about 15 calls in about 6 months. I had spent a lot of time online, reading stories of failures, reading what people hate about the generator they have, what do they love about it. I eliminated one from the start. I would not buy a 3600RPM unit. They are very loud, and vibrate a lot. In fact the one we had was 3600, and for the short time it worked for us, I found it very loud.
The next item on the list was what power we needed. I found a slew of 8000 watt units, I quickly realized with everything on the yacht running we only can use 5000 watts, if we try very hard. So 8000 to do simple things at sea like charge batteries, make water, make hot water, was overkill. I realized on most ocations we would use no more then 2500 watts, only using slightly more on very hot, humid, windless nights to run the AC unit. At 1600 watts when running it is the single biggest power consumer on the yacht. We have a second AC unit as well. It uses 1200 watts. so with just those two running for a nasty night we are looking at 2800 watts.
The next issue was fuel usage. The very slow 1800RPM units have a big displacement. the fuel usage I read about was in the 0.5-0.8GPH range. However I heard about one more generator, with a Kubota engine that ran at 2400RPM.
The smallest unit that has been made, and made well, was 2500 watts. these are very rare. I however found I could buy a new unit from Phasor that was 3500 watts for only $4500. This is a 2400RPM unit, properly fresh water cooled, and the fuel usage was 1 gallon of diesel every 5 hours under 1/2 load. 1 gallon every 4 hours under full load.
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So begin my search for a Phasor Generator. Every day I scan the boat classified listings for things that are a great value, and snap up any I can find and I can use. One morning I saw her. "Phasor 3.5 kw marine diesel gen set" It had been completely rebuilt. Asking price was 1200, firm. Well, lets say I nearly dropped out of my chair. A unit I was about to pay $4500 for, had just fell on my lap. The catch was I had to drive half way to New Orleans to get it. No problem. For $3300 I would drive half way to Fiji.

More to come!