120: Sailing Blown Away's ALL NEW UPGRADES TOUR - 2015 Leopard 44 Catamaran

Hey everybody! Thanks for joining us at Grand Cross St. Martin on the French side. We're here at this beautiful anchorage right now and we have spent three months getting our boat ready and doing all the upgrades to our charter boat so that we're able to live comfortably on this boat, really enjoy it, and also safely sail this boat and to go all over the world. Yeah. That's our goal is to circumnavigate so we have systems and everything in place in order to assure that. What we're going to focus on now are the upgrades and first one is not my wife. She's still my wife. She's the keeper. But how about that shirt babe? Whoops. How about that shirt babe? Yeah. Got some new swag. You want to flip around? Cool. Okay babe, what do you want to start with? Let's start with the rear cockpit and everything that changed here. It's so different. All right you pointed out. Welcome to our boat. Come along with us. Let's take a look. So one of the things we've added is lettering. A little worn salty style here and then here and then all the way up front on the boat over there on both sides. Man we really love this boat right now. We can't wait to show you all the things we've added to it. How about we talk about the dinghy? That's a great, that's the Cadillac right? Or the Suburban or the So we love our dinghy and you can find information about this on our website sailingblownaway.com. So we have the 380 centimeter. This is as large as the classic gets. It has the aluminum hull underneath which makes it more lightweight and then we have a 30 horsepower Nissan marine two-stroke engine. So it's lighter weight. You have to add the oil to it. One thing that we've done is really cool is I have run the fuel line from underneath here all the way underneath the boat. This is also our garbage can as you can see. We're waiting to take our trash. And then I can't open this up but the fuel line comes all the way up inside here into a six gallon tank and we also have this long steel cable which we keep everything locked up in. Then while we're here babe let's talk about the davit system. How we've improved that. So the davit system is the pulley system that brings our dinghy up and down from the water. Before we had it fixed the davit would make a big bang noise. Oh okay okay. And so we had to replace the Dyneema which is actually what pulls the dinghy up using a winch that is located in this compartment right here. And we changed out the bolts here again all part of creating a safer and stronger davit system. And then we opted to include a second latch and you can see on the other side there was a latch and then FKG just mimicked it for this side so that we have the ability to have both of the arms of the davit system strongly held by the boat. It just makes a big difference. And then also to accommodate our new very very long dinghy we had to move the eyelets that held these bridles that pull the dinghy up. We had to move them over because the dinghy is a lot longer than the ones that they use for charter. We also replaced the Dyneema straps because we needed to lift our dinghy to fit our scuba tank and life raft fabrication below. Speaking of tanks this Dyneema is so thick it could tow a tank. I think they said that this could lift a couple thousand pounds I want to say. Yeah yeah. So very very strong Dyneema which is good. The next exciting addition is this beautiful piece of art which is a steel rack that was created by FKG and it holds as you can see four of our scuba tanks and then our monster life raft which was located in this compartment. And we have moved that out so that in the event of an emergency we can easily access and deploy this monstrous box. So now we have the benefit of being able to kick it out easily with a hydrostatic release so that means that the life raft will deploy automatically once it hits the water. Notice that the red caps of our dive tanks match our new gumdrops. The charter boat is stripped down. They're not going to mess with cushions in order to make it homey and add fun and color. We've had St. Martin sales over on the Dutch side do all of our cushions and our helm enclosures and they did a really good job and we were really daring in our color selection. We wanted some fun colors kind of like these shirts. We're in the tropics we're having fun. Sunbrella which is the material that we used they've got so many great fun colors so we decided to use them. Listen if you want to experiment with color and you need some help on it contact me. I used to be a designer and I'll help you put it together. But let's take a look. This is the azure color on Sunbrella's line. This is uh tangelo right here that we've used as a contrasting welt. We used a Suavelle Mill Creek fabric. It's five dollars a yard super cheap and use some of the leftover material that's on the back of it just to make the facing fabric go a little bit longer. And then over here we've flipped it to where the tangelo is the main fabric and then the contrasting welt is the azure. We have some pillows that we got in Fiji a long time ago that are on the boat. Lots of fun. And then check out these winch covers right there. Our red gumdrops. Remember the candy really cool they protect and they're just like little fun energy pods. And then up here this is a caravan stripe by a company called Covington and it's a slip cover on top of Sunbrella's horizon. Not sure what the name of this color is but it matches right up with their azure color. And so you don't have any waterproofing issues right here and you can take this off this wears out and change it. Here we've upgraded the Raymarine from the regular chart plotter to a 17 inch chart plotter. I think it had a seven inch. And look at that beautiful view. Oh it's gorgeous. I love the red gumdrops. It's like one of my favorite additions to our boat for sure. And then what we have up here is a clear vinyl. We have a helm enclosure. They put straps to tie it down. It was custom fitted. And then what I love are these zips here and you can roll this up and then just clip them in. And you can do that all the way around depending on where the wind's coming from. So it's kind of an indoor outdoor type of thing. The main body of this is a really impervious white vinyl. And we also had the bolster reupholstered. The steel underneath the bolster had actually disintegrated. And so we actually needed to have that re-welded and we would never have known it if we hadn't taken the bolster off. But what a fun white with the blue contrast piping. Look at this. Whoa look at all this stuff out here. Hold on we're gonna get to that. Let's show them down in the engine compartment. There's an anti-siphon loop which Gregory Tamat, the Yanmar dealer, he installed the first one and showed us how to do it. Then I installed it on the port side. Check out a later video. This will help you eliminate a lot of heartache with getting water in your engine and causing engine failure. Don't let that happen to you. And you'll see all of this extra wiring as well. This was all added later. Voltage regulators for our alternators in order to accommodate our lithium system. Yep but we'll get there soon. So when talking to Kaz, who is the captain of the Saint Lucia Leopard 58 and also the surveyor, they said from a safety aspect they would take out the two gauges that were in here and then add an oil pressure, oil temperature and an oil pressure switch for both of the engines. That way you can diagnose things before they become a problem. The warning comes on and then it's just too late. So we're really glad we've got those. One of the things that's really important to me being living on a boat full-time is safety and so we had the opportunity to create a security system that's really simple and it's made by boaters for boaters. So this system is called Pirate Lights and it is a motion sensor that detects motion on your boat and when it detects motion it will put blinding lights on first and then secondly an alarm at 130 decibels and that will actually cause hearing damage within, I think, 20 seconds. So it's going to cause someone to get off the boat very quickly. Did you say Pirate Arrg my thing? One of the most important things to us is safety when we're at anchor and so we replaced two things. We replaced the bridle which is here, the white line that connects to the anchor chain which is really important. It takes all of the weight off of the anchor chain and also creates a stabilized triangle so that the boat is not spinning unnecessarily. What's underneath the water in the sand? Oh our new anchor. What's it called? It is our mantis anchor. It's called the beast. I was actually going to open the anchor locker but it's not here because it's actually doing its job but we did have to move back the chain lock about a foot to accommodate the length of the shaft of the new anchor. We have the generator and water storage. Previously the Spectral Watermaker, which we'll show you, would only fill up a starboard tank. What we've done is we've added this manifold and this enables us, if it's pointing down, it's filling. So this starboard is being filled now and when you want to close it off and fill the other tank, this one being the port tank, you just do that. And then down here we've added a switch to power up our deck wash and this is a 60 psi deck wash that's plumbed throughout here. We're going to do some plumbing here. It goes all the way over there and then hook the hose up here and it's awesome. You can clean your entire boat whenever you get to your anchorage. Get all the salt off of it. And then down here, look how much fun this is right here. This is sunflower yellow Sunbrella with Tangelo. I love this mango. I'm wearing it on me right now and so it's a lot of fun. We've added this little fruit basket here swinging in the breeze. And then what do we have over here? One of our favorite things to do at night is to pull out our yellow chairs and we take them out on the roof and we have our sundowners and we watch the sunset every night. So these are a great addition to our boat. And then here we've added the solar. We have five 410 watt LT panels, really high quality panels. And we also put these on the ends to keep this from coming in main sheets and popping them off. And then look how incredible this job is that FKG did and how beautiful this 316 stainless tube custom-made solar arc is. And how the panels are set into the panels versus on top which makes it just more streamlined and I think more beautiful. Very elegant. And then right here we have a 355 watt LG panel here and then up here. We've heard from people in the past that put as many panels on the boat as you can. It's really the cheapest part of an electrical system and so that's what we've done. We must have a total of 2,800 watts on this boat and it works great. Can't wait to show you the rest. One of the exciting new sails that we added to our sail inventory is the parasailer. And we used our current spinnaker halyard to be able to do that which connects to the front d-rings to let this beautiful sail launch. And so we're really excited to be able to use that for our downwind sail. Two new additional pieces of technology for safety reasons. One is the Iridium Go. This is our satellite that allows us to be in touch wherever we are in the world crossing oceans. We have the ability to text. It also allows us to download weather. And then the second piece is this disc. It's a GPS disc which allows us to send a GPS signal I think every 20 seconds for a group of 15 people to be able to download to know where we are at any point in time. And then this is a wi-fi extender and the wi-fi extender allows us to connect to wi-fi that is on shore that is unlocked. If you are going to a restaurant and you get it's on the water and you get the wi-fi code remember that wi-fi code and then share with us and you can pull it in from your boat and use their wi-fi. Okay you didn't hear that here. It's one of the advantages of watching the Blown Away channel. One other piece of technology that we added was radar which is really important when we're underway to be able to know what the weather system is going to be or to be able to identify a boat that does not have an AIS number. So radar will allow us to actually see them. It could be a fisherman's boat and we would not ordinarily see that on our AIS. So the radar is up on top of the mast there and that was installed when we were in St. Lucia by Regis Electronics. The radar is not just having its own mast anymore. He's up on our mast. So one thing that we've had added is this Phifertex on the sides and back of our boat. What it is is a mesh that only allows 14 percent of light to come through so it shields you from those harsh rays and also wind. It fits right in tightly or you can do it loosely another way and have it come out to here instead almost like a wing so you can adjust it either way. That way you can see out and you're still protected by it. Great job babe. And it's on the back right here and it's on the other side and when you get some rain coming in it also stops a lot of the rain. So this is a great kind of indoor outdoor solution. And there you can see the effect it has on the sunshine to be able to keep out enough sun but allow us to be able to see out which is a great combination. Okay let's go into the salon. Great idea. This is probably the most important place on the boat. And boy they have no idea how many changes are made to the back of that panel. This is basically the heart of the boat. This operates all the electrical. But just to get started a little bit. Spectral water maker. We've added that. We'll show you that later. And then the show that I never get tired of. This is our Victron electrical system that includes lithium. Here's a deep sea electronics automatic starter for our generator when our batteries drop below 20 percent. And this measures solar amps. Here we have our iridium go part lights here. And guys we added so much to our panel. We had to add a separate dc extension panel to get everything on it. To expand the amount of food that we're able to purchase and add to our fridge and freezer we bought a Dometic which is a convertible either fridge or freezer. We could use it for either. So that really has given us a great opportunity to be able to expand what we've purchased from the grocery store for longer provisioning. And another thing that we're working on is turning our entire kitchen into an all electric kitchen. And so we're partially through that. We have a lot of appliances. I know it's not a traditional way of sailing but we love them. This is a miniature oven that's soon to go. We're going to pull out the Eno gas oven because it doesn't really work that well and put in an electric smart oven. Over here we kept the microwave. We use that quite a bit. And then we've added a kettle. Whoa look at the light show. And then just instapot ninja. All that good stuff. One of the best additions that we made. Outlets underneath the table because otherwise to have your computer here and plug into an electrical outlet you would have to run the cable across here to the outlets on the wall over here. Which is highly inconvenient for someone who wants to walk down the stairs. All right moving down the hall into the port side as you have seen in our previous upload of the washing machine versus the councils. And the washing machine is in and so we are doing laundry on a regular basis which is awesome. Sleeping and sleep quality is really important especially on a boat. You don't get a whole lot of sleep especially at anchor because you're constantly worried about dragging your anchor. So when we do get sleep we want it to be high quality sleep. So we have taken our mattress and added a topper to it and that topper is three and a half inches thick. So that is an addition that we love. One of my wife's favorite safety devices is the EPIRB. And it's registered. Make sure you not only get an EPIRB but make sure it's registered. What does EPIRB stand for? Expensive piece of equipment that has to be inspected every four years for more money is what it stands for. And that you have to take with you in your go bag. Yeah and then fishing rods. Can't wait to use those. The most exciting thing and also the most expensive thing that we added to this boat that also ties in with the solar is our lithium electrical system. A lot of work had to be done to this but it totally has transformed our life here on the boat. We are never going to run out of power because of our storage and our power producing capabilities. We are able to use our generator which is a 6k generator. We're able to use our 2800 watts of solar and order power as well as our alternators. So come take a look at what we've added. Yeah we have a fuel compartment in here. Take a look at what we've packed in over here. So these are Relyon RB300AH batteries. We have three of them in there for a total 900 amp hours. We also have a Victron 5000 watt Quattro inverter which enables us to power the generator, solar, shore and this thing converts and it's awesome. Here we have a battery protect. Next are our controllers. Each one of our solar panels is individually controlled by a Victron MNPT. The reason for this is to protect against shading and also to make it a whole lot more efficient because this is valuable real estate. We want to get the most bang for the buck. So behind all of this we have those seven Victron controllers. Now for the last thing we want to show you the Spectra Newport 400 water maker. First part of it is the charcoal filter and you have to have a seacot put in directly with this and this brings in the seawater. Here's the raw water strainer which strains out the little fishies and that type of thing. Through here is where the exit water that has a lot of salt in it that is expelled during the freshwater process that doesn't go through the membrane. It goes out this part right here and you can see that we've got a decent storage space there. So here we are down in the forward starboard cabin and underneath the bed and this is where our Spectra lives and it produces up to 17 gallons per hour. Great thing about this is it's DC powered and you can run this off of your battery and it makes really good water. Well we hope you enjoyed the tour of the boat. So many of you have been asking for a tour of all of the additions that we have made so hopefully this will satisfy your interest in what it was that we did. Yeah and make sure you check out our website sailingblownaway.com and check out boat upgrades. A lot of these will be detailed in that and a lot of these have links to Amazon where you don't pay any extra when you click on these. You can buy these from the best sellers in the country at the lowest prices and it helps us out too. We will continue to keep this updated and guys we really enjoyed doing this for you. We love you guys. We appreciate you. Thanks for coming along with us. Make sure you subscribe. Make sure you share with your friends. Get them on board with us. That would mean a lot and comment. We'll get right back with you. We want to hear from you. Thanks a lot for coming along. Yeah thanks for watching. See you guys.