Midwinter - but things happen...

It is the middle of winter and Turid II is sleeping under his tarpaulin, one might think. But is it so? What is actually happening?

Yes, it is thought about and planned. At least three major projects are underway:

• New heat inside
• New compressor for the cooler
• New (or greatly expanded) instrument network

Heat

The heat in Turid II is an original system from 1978 – a kerosene-powered POD with water-borne heat for radiators under all berths. A hose loop with glycol-mixed water around the entire boat supplies the radiators with heat.

The system is smart but has some drawbacks. In addition to the fact that the POD unit itself looks like a projectile from a distant time, the radiator system takes up a lot of space - the spaces under the berths are basically unusable and a large part of the wardrobe is occupied.

We have decided to install a modern diesel-powered Eberspächer instead. Planning for its installation is in full swing but provisionally it will be placed in the engine room.

Cold

The cooling box has been out of order for some time - the box is still there but the compressor has been removed for some reason. A new Isotherm Compact Classic 2001 compressor has therefore been purchased and is awaiting installation.

Instrument network

The small network we had on board was of the Seatalk NG type. This is Raymarine's version of NMEA 2000 - basically the same system as the CAN bus for the automotive industry. The fact that it is Seatalk NG is due to the fact that the boat is equipped with two chartplotters from Raymarine. In addition to the chartplotters, only VHF, AIS and sonar sensors have been connected to the network so far.

VHF – radio with better range than a mobile phone
AIS – provides the ability to see nearby ships on the chartplotter

But a small net can become bigger...

Now the boat is equipped with new sensors - to start with a barometer and temperature sensor in the cooler, as well as Wi-Fi connection with the outside world and possibilities to set alarm limits etc. In addition, long-term logging of all data. More donors may become relevant in the future...

For this, we have acquired a Raymarine i70s display that can replace the old sum log in the cockpit.

The i70s can display all imaginable data from the Seatalk NG network and will be a nice information center during sailing. We bought it used on eBay from Hungary.

Armor start

My fingers are itching to start working on the boat - tomorrow I think I'll start with the scrapping of the old heating system. Step one is to drain it of water/glycol mixture.