Your thrill seeking reporters here, calling in from the swampland of coastal North Carolina, where, we are ever so pleased to report it is hot and sticky. All the better to test our newly installed and craftily re-plumbed air conditioning system. What could be better than 90F\/29C with a caressing humidity of 70%.<\/p>\n
Wind Horse<\/em> has been patiently stabled at Cory and Angela McMahon’s Triton Marine in Beaufort. She is high and dry, quite clean on the outside courtesy of tropical storm Beryl and a five inch\/120mm downpour the day preceding our joyful reunion.<\/p>\n Coming from the dry heat of the Sonoran Desert the humidity would be untenable hauled out like this, but we are happy to report that the air conditioning system is working with us out of the water. A few details for those of you into BTUs.<\/p>\n We have a pair of 16,000 BTU Marine Air units in the great room, a 10,000 BTU system for the aft cabins, and a 12,000 BTU unit forward. The air conditioner condenser coils that would normally be cooled with sea water are in fact plumbed into the aft fresh water tank. It is full at the moment, holding roughly 700 US gallons\/2700 liters. Yesterday at 1700, the worst of the day, with all four units running temperature at the water return point was 104 degrees F, and 10 degrees F less after having gone through the tank. This after running for the preceding eight hours.<\/p>\n As the air conditioners were cycling on and off, their full output not being required, we decided to really hammer the system and dropped all four units’ program temperature ten degrees F. This had the effect of keeping all four units on 100% of the time. The temperature of the fresh water tank rose over the next two hours until water temperature returning to the tank was 116F, at which time the various compressors started to shut down with their high pressure cut outs. Today with the system backed off to 80 degrees F\/24C the tank has remained cool enough to keep everyone happy.<\/p>\n As water is far more efficient at heat transfer than air, once we are afloat the system will work even better.<\/p>\n We are into an intense week of boat projects with Cory and crew, so we’ll hold the gory details until we are afloat, or at least get a break, after which we shall resume testing of various items on our half scale model of the Wicked FPB 97.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"