3rd January 2012

I've been spending less time on Sabrina, now that she is afloat hence the lack of updates, but over the last couple of weeks I have managed to get the central heating installed, which I am quite pleased with.

I'll post some picture at a later date, plus various diagrams to show how I ended up doing it, plus a wiring diagram for the Webasto ThermoTop C which is the heart of the setup.

The Webasto heats the water in the calorfier (the second coil) then passes on to 10 fin rads, I plan to add a small heater matrix from a car (probably a fiat punto) with a PC fan behind it to blow hot air into the rear cabin. I'll also do the same with the waste heat from the engine so that we can have heat without firing up the Webasto.

The setup that I have means that I can use the waste heat from the engine to heat the water and also provide heat in the cabin when the weather is a little chilly or use the Webasto to provide hot water and/or heating via the fin rads.

24th November 2011

My Mum had offered, in a round about way, to make the covers for the cushions in the saloon. I looked at buying some foam and making new cushions as the old ones were past it and after costing it out I decided that it was a none starter as it was going to cost over £300.

Talking to Kevin who is fitting out his boat, he suggested getting a set of second hand caravan cushions from a caravan breakers, he recommended National Caravan Breakers as he had bought a set from them and they were in very good condition.

I went to visit them and bought a couple of sets as I needed new mattresses for the front cabin and saved myself over £150 in the process. The covers were past it, but that didn't matter as I was only interested in the foam, after a couple of hours of trimming with a sharp knife I had a set of cushions that fitted perfectly.

There ebay store is: http://stores.ebay.co.uk/national-caravan-breakers

If you are local to Colwyn Bay then you can save yourself on the postage and pick them up.

I then picked some material from the local haberdashery and Mum set to work. As you can see she's done a great job:

Below are some photos of her at her new birth in the marina.

   

If you are looking for a new birth for your boat then I can't recommend Overwater enough, its a beautiful Marina.

Take a look at: http://www.overwatermarina.co.uk/

or go an visit them, they have a great little coffee shop that is currently open Thurs -> Fri and serves good home cooked food.

13th November 2011

Shes been on the water a week now and I've found a few teething problems so will address those over winter. There are two major problems though.

The first is a leak in the rear Port corner, an area that I though was ok, it appears to be weeping a small amount (about 1 ping every 24 hours), I suspect a joint has failed somewhere, I've fixed it from the inside using resin and filler and will drag her out sometime next year and renew that whole corner and will probably do the other side at the same time, should only take a week to cut out the timber and renew, seal and repaint.


The other is the engine block seems to be cracked, it was fixed by the previous owner but the fix appears to have failed, its leaking out of the studs for the dynastart and also below that. It had been packed with liquid metal type filler, but its come away from the block. I have been repacking the block with resin based metal putty and hopefully that should solve the problem until I can either replace/rebuild the engine. 

The long term plan is to replace the diesel with an electric motor, but I can't do that till battery prices drop some more, ideally I'd want to use li-ion batteries for capacity and weight saving.

  

6th November 2011

The trip to Audlem