Well, I am back home now and will be taking the sails off of Pandora later today to prepare for hauling her out on Monday. Plans include an upgrade of her water maker as I have one from a prior installation that is dual speed and makes either 7 or 14 gallons per hour. The current one has a speed and plugs along at a very modest 5-6 gallons per hour, not enough for what Brenda and I use each day. With the “new” Spectra unit I’ll only have to run it for less than two hours each day and we will be all set with plenty of H2O. I’m feeling cleaner already.
I’ll also be sending out the sails to be checked as there are a few small issues that need to be addressed. Nothing big but there are lots of miles on them since their last checkout and I don’t want any problems.
As far as other projects go, well, let’s just say etc., etc… Details to come.
If you somehow missed my posts from last week, I was lucky to be able to crew on a 130′ motor yacht from Greenport LI to Ft. Lauderdale. Want to learn more? Check out the last 4 or 5 posts. Anyway, this was the boat that I was on. She’s very pretty and wonderfully appointed in every way. Here she is as she pulled away from the dock in Greenport.
Well, four days and 6,000 gallons of diesel later, we arrived in Ft Lauderdale. As the crew was getting her settled in her berth, I asked the engineer Anthony for yet another tour of the engine room. It was better to go down there when the engines were off because it’s REALLY, REALLY NOISY when she is underway and we’d have to wear hearing protection. In spite of all the noise in the engine room, it’s very well insulated so it’s quite quiet elsewhere on board.
Anyway, in no particular order, here you go…
There are two 1,000 HP Cat engines that push her along at a cruising speed of about 12kts. At that speed the combined engines burn about 4o gallons per hour. Push that up to 14kts, her top speed, and the consumption goes up to more than 6o GPH or 1,500 per day. Yikes, that’s a lot of fuel. But then, she’s a big thirsty girl.
With consumption like that, she needs big tanks and a lot of them. This is all the valves that the engineer uses to move fuel from one tank to another to keep her in trim. All fuel for the engines is fed to the engines through a 1,000 gallon “day tank” that is replenished as needed from other tanks. 
And, if you love well set up valves, and I do, you’ll love this array. It’s the valves for each of the bilge areas. Don’t these just make you go weak in the knees? Ok, perhaps not that weak but they do look pretty neat. Right?
Fuel filters? Yup, lots of them. 
Interestingly, the muffler has two exhaust ports. When she’s at rest the exhaust goes out on the starboard side above the waterline and when she’s at speed, the valve is closed so that the exhaust goes out through the bottom of the boat into the slipstream in front of the props. The big white drum is the muffler and the white tube is cooling water injection from the engine. 
And speaking of cooling, this is the heat exchanger on the front of the engine. Seawater runs through this “radiator” along with engine coolant. Like everything on this boat, it’s a big cooler.
And speaking of cool, how about the three AC units? The boat has an enormous amount of cooling capacity as there is a lot of “make up air” brought into the boat so that all of the air is replaced, I think twice each hour, to keep humidity down. Even the air in the bilges is refrigerated and refreshed. Even when the engines are running the space around them the engine room is cool. It takes something like 10 tons of capacity to keep the boat cool verses perhaps 10-20% of that for a similar amount of volume in a house. 
And, to generate all that electricity there are two generators of 100kw each. Yes, huge is the word that comes to mind. See a pattern here?
And, just like Pandora (what little they have in common), they have a watermaker. No, make that two with a capacity of 750 gallons per day. That’s how they can have bathtubs in most ever cabin and a hot tub on the upper deck. No need to conserve on this boat. 
And all of this “stuff” is monitored on video screens just about everywhere aboard. The galley, bridge, the Captain’s cabin, crew mess and who knows where else. With all this complexity there’s ample opportunity for things to go wrong and plenty to keep Anthony busy. 
Not sure that I look quite at home among all of this equipment. Besides, I am wearing a white shirt. No wait, there’s not a speck of dirt anywhere. Anthony can even pull up the stainless flooring and climb under the engine to wipe up that last drip of oil. I wonder if he wears a white crew shirt to do that. Probably as he doesn’t have to do laundry. That’s Heather, the steward’s job. No problem. Bring on the grime.
She’s a remarkable vessel, that’s for sure.
And, speaking of remarkable vessels, how about Global, an expedition yacht that is berthed near the 17th street bridge in Ft Lauderdale. This sort of boat, and she was built in 2007, is designed to go, well, to go anywhere. She sure looks like she means business.
As you’d expect, she has a nifty spot to land a helicopter. The second deck is also set up as a landing pad when the lower deck is cluttered with “toys”. She has a submarine, of course, and you know how much room they take up take up. That crane is for heavy lifting, subs, cars, boats and all. If you are interested, their site is pretty interesting with a good overview of her capabilities and toys.
For now the upper “pad” is covered with astro turf. I’ll bet that it’s a great spot for Fifi to do her thing. Somehow I have this image of Fifi being swept overboard by the downwash of a hovering copter. “Fifi, Fiiiiiifffffiiii, somebody please find her…..”
And speaking of landing on a boat, they have a video of a helicopter landing on their back deck, and they are doing so by remote control. As it’s on Vimeo, I don’t know how to embed it here so you’ll have to click here. 
And of course, a pool with a lovely ocean motif. 
Well, going on and on about yachts isn’t getting any work done on Pandora, much less the bathroom remodeling.
Better sign off and get on with it. Thanks for the tour Anthony. Awesome.
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