Newbie boat questions

[arbitrarysailor]

Hi there

I grew up in a sailing family (In South Africa) and have done a few 2-up week-long trips so I have a fairly good idea of how to sail etc etc but I am by no means ignorant of my ignorance.

Now I'm considering buying my first yacht.
- I will probably be sailing single handed or with my wife. (We're young and she wants to ride motorbikes through Africa so she's going to either start sailing or stay at home... we have a very functional relationship
- I want to do between 2-6 month trips. I have no desires whatsoever to navigate buoys on a Sunday.
- I am considering redoing Joshua Slocums route, although this will probably have to wait till I'm older and have more time off.
- For now I think I'll be sailing up and down the South African coast, mostly learning the boat and getting more experience.

My questions are:
1. So far none of the yachts I've seen (all around 31-34 footers) have had fridges. I realise that when you're at sea for 3 months a fridge isn't going help *that* much but I really like the idea of having some frozen meat to defrost and fry up every now and then. The question is, how wise is it to jury rig a marine fridge into yacht that wasn't designed to have one. How are they powered? What additional electrical equipment would the boat need in order to have a fridge (they all have 12v systems for vhf, gps, radar etc.

2. I am a computer programmer and would want to have a laptop on board. I vaguely understand that in order to power a 110/220v device on board I would need an inverter. Could someone please explain how this works and what kind of setup (extra batteries etc) one would need to reliably run a laptop for 4 hours a day? I've seen photos of boats with microwaves on board... can you run those off inverters or is that just for when they're docked and connected to mains?

3. Assuming you're at sea for 3 months, how much fresh water should you take per person? How easy is it to collect rain water? (assuming it rains)

I'll stop there... I have plenty more questions but that's enough for now.

thanks
j.

[Faster]

In our area many/most boats of that size certainly have fridges. Most often a 12 V system, run off the shore power when available through the charger. While a true 'freezer' will use more, our fridge uses an average 3-4 amps/hr. Running the fridge for approx 16 hrs a day we can go 3-4 days without charging once other loads are taken into account as well. That's with a 400Ah bank and no solar or wind backup generation.

Many a conventional ice box has been converted to a fridge with a holding plate setup after the fact. It's not difficult but can be a bit pricey. In your area you're probably warmer generally, increasing the loads, but also solar will probably be rather effective, helping out there.

I've found my laptop and inverter uses about the same as the fridge but don't really like the way our small inverter heats up so 4 hours straight might make me nervous (a friend's boat burnt up last summer - speculation has it that the laptop was left powered up)

Having never done 3 months 'at sea', I'll leave the water needs for now....

[arbitrarysailor]

Originally Posted by Faster

Running the fridge for approx 16 hrs a day we can go 3-4 days without charging once other loads are taken into account as well. That's with a 400Ah bank and no solar or wind backup generation.

Thanks Faster. That already answers a lot of questions. How many/what size/type batteries do you have? I see there are many types of batteries (marine gel etc). Is the idea to just find the highest Ah you can get in as small a package as possible?

j.

[seabreeze_97]

You might want to read one man's plan made for crossing the Atlantic in a 32 footer. He discusses every point of planning.
S/V Kestrel - The Plan
Another excellent site
Atom Voyages | Voyaging Around the World on the Sailboat Atom with James and Mei
That fellow has done 2 1/2 circumnavs. Great Q&A and provisioning info.
As for the laptop, you should always look to redundancy. Using AC power with an inverter works, as long as you use a good inverter that is intended for use with electronics. A backup is a simple automotive-type cigarette lighter adapter. No inverter required.