Generators on Cruising Boats

Generators are compact motors that convert fossil fuels into electrical power. They can produce power in the form of Alternating Current (AC) or Direct Current (DC). They can also be wound in a way to create various voltages, allowing you to select the ideal generator for your yachts electrical needs. 

Generators offer the convenience of electrical production from the easily carried and energy dense fuel source known as diesel, propane, and gasoline. At any time, the motor can be started up and a stable and reliable flow of electricity will flow from it into your yachts power system. This power can be used to recharge the batteries, power appliances, and even give you the comfort of air conditioning while away from the dock.

While these conveniences are nice, they are still just conveniences and not necessities. There is no reason to postpone your cruising departure because you don't have a generator yet. Generators should be viewed as a "nice to have" and not a "need to have." 

Generators offer a lot of convenience, but this luxury does come at a price. Generators take up a considerable amount of space, energy, peace, and cost. Cheaper generators tend to be in large metal frames. These generators will only set you back a few hundred dollars, but they are loud and guzzle gas and oil as they produce their power. These generators are easy to find at almost any hardware store near a port. If you need a generator in a pinch, this option could set you up with the power you need, and not break the bank in the process.

A smaller and quieter option comes from Honda, in the form of their EU line of generators. These generators are much more fuel efficient, allowing you to power your boat for hours on end with a single gallon of diesel. They work by actually throttling the motor to meet the electrical demand placed on it. Think of the metal frame generators as a power plant with an on/off switch. When it is off, it produces no power, and when it is on, it is running at full blast producing all the power it can. You simply draw what you need from this pool of power until it runs out of fuel. The Honda EU series will throttle back, giving you much greater run time and save a lot of fuel.  

We bought the Honda EU2000i and it has a 0.94 gallon fuel tank that is capable of running for more than 7 hours! The manual states that at full blast, it will run for around 3 hours and under no load around 8 hours. 

As it throttles back, it not only saves fuel, but it also makes the entire process much quieter. Less umph from the motor means a more silent experience for those that are near by. The Honda EU line is considered to be the quietest on the market (which is a big factor into why we chose this model) and it is still pretty loud in our opinion. It never hurts your ears, but it is a constant low drone in the background that never seems to go away until you shut the generator down. 

One more added benefit with these compact generators is they are lighter and often come in a nifty case that makes transporting easier. This makes it easy to stow it somewhere in the boat and set it up on the deck when you need to fire the unit up. 

Our Honda EU2000i cost us about $1,000. This was by no means a small purchase for us and we thought about it for a long time. The turning point in our decision came when we found ourselves forced to transit the ICW on the east coast of the United States due to the present and deteriorating weather we have been having. Motoring for a long time is not possible with our electric motor, as it will drain the battery banks.  

We looked at all the options and weighed out the facts of the decision. If we chose to tie up in a marina to recharge, we would spend around $90 per night to recharge the batteries. This means that in roughly 11 marina nights, we could have purchased our own generator and charged the batteries up at anchor for the price of gasoline. 

While these cheaper options involve gasoline motors and low power outputs, there is an entire other level of generators to look at. 

Diesel generators will produce massive amounts of power at a very efficient rate. They are also safer to operate because diesel is not explosive like gasoline is, greatly decreasing the risk of a fire or explosion on your boat. 

Diesel generators also cost a significant amount more, most of them start around $5,000 and quickly climb in price from there. These generators are heavy and by no means considered portable, as they are mounted on their own engine beds in the hull. These motors will have their own cooling system and exhaust system that needs to be maintained, just like on your primary diesel motor.  

The complexity of installing a diesel generator is greatly amplified as it needs its dedicated space, and this dedicated space needs to allow the operator access for maintenance that needs to be carried out on a regular basis. 

Generators are by no means mandatory, but they do allow for more comforts on board if you are willing to spend a little more money. 

The Waiting Game

While you might think that cruising is an endless vacation with no schedules or time constraints. The truth is, time is always around us. 

Yes, cruisers will lose track of time and might not even know what day it is, but time and schedules are still a very real part of their journey. The weather and its weather patterns run on the same time that the rest of the world operates on.  

When you decide to leave a destination is up to you, but when you can leave a destination depends entirely on the weather. In the right season, you can leave any day, but in the wrong season, you might find yourself waiting for days, if not weeks, for the weather to cooperate. 

Cruising is much more relaxed than working life, but it still follows the rules of time. Instead of a boss telling you what to do, you have nature telling you what to do. 

2 Year Headstay Inspection

Wisdom, our 1968 Morgan 45 was re-rigged with synthetic standing rigging back in 2015. The headstay has endured use, abuse, and a lot of weather over these two years. Our headstay's deadeye got severely damaged by our anchor and needed to be replaced, giving us a wonderful opportunity to evaluate how the stay is holding up at the bow.​

The bow is known to be the harshest place on a yacht for rigging. Every single wave that splashes up will wet the stem and the lower part of the headstay in a fine misting of salty moisture. This mist will work its way into the tiniest nooks and crannies in your headstay, causing devastating corrosion from the inside out.​

To make life for your stem fittings even harder, being up at the tip of the bow, they are often ignored and forgotten, as the rest of the boat gets cleaned regularly, but the headstay might only get a quick splash with a hose.​

On most yachts, the headstay lives inside the furler, where it is forgotten and ignored until something breaks. On yachts with hank on sails, the headstay is easily inspected, but still neglected.​

Synthetic rigging prevails in these hardships, as the Dyneema fibers are made out of plastic and are immune to corrosion caused by moist salt spray. Let us see what lies beneath the surface of our headstay!​

Under all those wraps, you will find the true knot that holds the entire stay in tension: The Shroud Frapping Knot. This knot pinches and seizes the lashings together with such ferocity that even slippery Dyneema can not escape its hold.

This knot is tied while the tails of the lashings are under tension with the entire tensioning system. While the lashings are tight and under load, the Shroud Frapping Knot pinches them in place, allowing you to remove the tensioning lines without losing any tension in the headstay. 

This relatively simple knot can be a bit time consuming to tie, taking me close to 20 minutes, but it will hold steadfast for years, never yielding nor giving way as you sail. 

On stays that will require a significant amount of tension, it is best to use oversized thimbles as they will accommodate more wraps with the lashings, giving you significantly greater mechanical advantage to properly tension the stay. They also provide a wider radius turn which imparts less stress on the fibers of the lashings.

With the tension removed and the lashings untied, you can see the inside of the eye splice at the end of the stay. The fibers have flattened out as they have been pressed into the thimble for two years. There is some slight corrosion staining that appears on the eye splice, and this is from slight surface rusting that occurred on the stainless steel thimble. 316 Stainless Steel is famed for being corrosion resistant, yet in two years on the bow, it has begun to corrode in places that are not visible to external inspection. Imagine if this were a steel headstay with steel fittings swaged together up here. Corrosion would have already set in and it would be a countdown until something failed in a catastrophic manner. 

Synthetic standing rigging is immune to these sorts of problems and the steel components utilized are small and easy to inspect, making their impact on the entire situation much less grave. 

Deadeye Torture Test

Synthetic standing rigging, made out of Dyneema, is stronger than steel rigging but several times lighter. This allows your yacht to have less weight aloft while having more strength to hold the mast upright. The result of this is your yacht will become less tender and perform better in all wind conditions. 

As if all of these facets of synthetic standing rigging were not wonderful enough, it has yet another shining attribute of greatness, it can't corrode!

Dyneema is made out of UHMWPE, which stands for Ultra-High-Molecular-Weight-Poly-Ethelene. The important part in that long word is Poly-Ethelene, another word for plastic. We all remember those commercials from the 1990's when they would show some miracle being performed, like saving a premature baby, or transporting clean drinking water, and they they would finish with "Plastic makes it possible." Once again, the world of plastics has had yet another breakthrough and can now create fibers that are stronger than steel, weigh next to nothing, and (since they are plastic) never corrode.

Your standing rigging faces a harsh life on a yacht. It is often ignored or overlooked while constantly bathed in moisture and salts. The stays are all crushed at the ends, making them grasp the wires as they slowly but surely begin to rust. In time, the corrosion will become so severe that the stay will break and fail, all because of a little moisture on its surface. 

Synthetic stays are immune to this issue, as they will not absorb, nor will they interact with moisture on their surface! While freeing your mind from the concern of corrosion may sound grand, there is one weakness specific to synthetic standing rigging: chafe. 

Chafe will break individual fibers on the stay, gradually weakening it until it will fail under the load it is frequently subjected to. Chafe, however, is easily avoidable. If you see your sheet rubbing on your stay, simply re-route your sheet to avoid this contact. If you know the stay will be chafed to carry out its task, simply add a chafe sleeve to it, or if the chafe will be severe, add service wrappings to provide an even more durable layer of sacrificial protection. 

This is all well and good, but what happens if you overlook something? What if a part of your rigging becomes chafed quite severely before you notice it? How bad can it get?

While sheets chafing on your stays is bad (in the long run), they are not your worst of concerns. You should look at all items on your yacht as potential chafe offenders and secure them in a way that they can not cause any harm. I protected my headstay against chafe from the hanks, but I neglected to consider what could happen if chafe between the deadeye and the anchor occurred.

In this destructive experience, the anchor lept out of its roller and laid against the deadeye for 3 days while in a storm. The results were quite devastating. 

First, the thimble that produces a nice and appropriately radiused bend was bent fiercely by the shank of the anchor. The Dyneema of the deadeye was the next piece in this destructive path. Several strands of the grommet were chafed through completely, making this component severely weakened and in immediate need for replacing. 

The damage only occurred on one side of the deadeye, as the anchor only laid on one portion of it as it chafed away. This did mean that several of the strands were still intact, though they were weakened by the tight radius bend through the toggle. The toggle itself also appears a bit flustered by the entire situation, as surface rust is present (thankfully, the surface rust is actually rust from the anchor that rubbed off on the toggle) and the corner of the toggle is a bit rounded from the constant pounding. This constant impact will work harden the metal in the toggle and make it more prone to cracking in the future.

Now, while this damage may seem severe, it was easily avoidable by properly securing the anchor, and it was also easy and inexpensive to repair. 

The cost of materials for a new deadeye are merely the cost of 4 feet of dyneema in the size you used. This particular deadeye was made out of 9mm SK-78 dyneema and the materials only cost around $20. The deadeye itself takes about an hour to make, making the entire repair not that intrusive on the wallet. Should a situation like this arise, I carry a "pre-made" deadeye in our box of spares, that way I can get straight to work and not worry about taking the time to manufacture one should the need arise.  

While synthetic rigging is stronger than steel, it is quite fragile by comparison. Special care should be taken to ensure that no chafe occurs. If a component becomes chafed, you can always refer to this post for guidance as to its continued serviceability. 

https://www.riggingdoctor.com/life-aboard/2015/10/16/how-much-chafe-is-too-much

Chafe is a fact of life on a sailboat, but thankfully it is an easily inspectable problem that shows signs externally, unlike steel rigging which can corrode away internally and only show problems that are detectable to a trained and professional eye.  

One last point about the durability of Dyneema. This deadeye became severely chafed during a gale that lasted for 3 days. After the gale, we sailed 80 miles around Cape Hatteras in winds ranging from 30-45 knots and the deadeye remained functional, holding the mast up. We did not load the headstay with a sail, as that might have pushed it beyond its remaining strength, but we did fly a staysail and double reefed main in these wind conditions as we beat to windward. The deadeye was under intense and severe load during this ordeal, and yet it remained intact during the whole event. If chafe is a concern in your mind, let my misfortune of a mangled deadeye demonstrate to you that even in a disfigured state, Dyneema is rediculously strong and will stand up to the abuse to get you home safely! 

Off Season

Those with daily jobs have to go to work everyday. Weekends will give them a bit of a rest, as they gear back up for Monday! 

When these people take an extended break, they want to do it at the "best time." Collectively, everyone wants to do it at a similar time frame and this creates the "tourist season" in destination towns. People don't want to visit a place if the conditions are not optimal, so no one goes when it is not perfect. 

As a result, the stores and restaurants will hire more staff during the "season" and slow down or close entirely during the "off-season" since there isn't really a market to stay open for. When you arrive somewhere by boat, you might get there during the "season" and be surrounded by tons of other tourists who have descended on this area in a swarm. You will get to experience the pre-planned and orchestrated spectacle that the town has put on for its guests. 

Unlike all these other guests that need to return to work after a fun-packed vacation, you get to stay, as you are on your boat and in no hurry to be anywhere. Life is an adventure and you are going to cruise through it at a very relaxed pace. 

When the "season" comes to a close and the "off-season" begins, these towns will roll up their sidewalks and shut down.  Maddie and I find that this is actually the best time to visit a place, as you will get to know the locals and experience what life there is really like.

We arrived in Hatteras, NC just as the season was coming to an end. It was fun going to different restaurants and walking around the town looking at the items the shops had on display. A few days later, all the stores started to shut down because the "season" was over. Restaurants would open on their last day in a blaze of glory! All items on the menu were 50% off, as they wanted to clear out their freezer before closing for the "off-season."  Luckily, each of our favorite restaurants was closing on a different day, so we had the opportunity to attend the closing of each of them!

Once the party was over, the town was much quieter and only a few places stayed open. At the moment, there is a place that is open for lunch, another place open for dinner, a coffee shop, and a general market (which stocks fresh vegetables and other foods). You will soon come to know the locals, as everyone is going to be in one of these places and you can really get a feel for the true town. 

The facade has come down, the makeup has been washed away, and you can see what the town is really like. Hatteras is a town of fisherman who are all welcoming and friendly! While here, we have watched and learned how to clean a fish like a machine (6 quick cuts to extract a fillet) and felt welcomed by the locals.  

We are the only sailboat that has come here in a long time, so everyone knows about it. When we are talking with them and tell them that we are cruisers and we were sailing by, they will interject "Oh, you guys are the sailboat." Then they will usually offer us a ride to a neighboring town if we need supplies or parts. They have all been very helpful, but thankfully we haven't needed to go anywhere as our parts arrived by mail shortly after we got here. 

I don't mean that they have offered to drive us, I mean they have offered us the keys to their car! This is someone who met us 5 minutes ago. The people in this town, truly are kind and generous people who all look out for each other and everyone in their town. 

When planning your cruise, don't discount a destination because you would arrive there after the "season" has ended, or because you will arrive near the "end of the season". Value these opportunities to see and experience these places the way the locals do. You will get to see a side of these destinations that few ever even dream of!