Sababa
Guru
- Joined
- May 23, 2022
- Messages
- 556
- Vessel Name
- Sababa
- Vessel Make
- Maritimo 52
My wife and I just got back from a bit of an adventure to pick up our Maritimo from its first winter haul out with Port Townsend Shipwrights. If you saw my post a few weeks ago about losing a fender when a head sea took out all my Polyform fender holsters (terrible design), you’ll know we had a chippy trip up to drop it off, and the return voyage was if anything even chippier, with 6-8 foot seas on the bow at times heading into south winds gusting to 30+ knots as we came down Admiralty Inlet. The Maritimo shrugged it off and after a quick transit of the locks and an aborted first attempt to get into our slip with the wind turning our stern sideways we were home safe and sound.
The weather was mercifully better when we flew in on Thursday in a little Cessna 172 air taxi. We stopped at the Spruce Goose, the airfield diner, for outstanding pie and coffee when landed, only to find out that the only cab in town was on a run 30 miles away to Kingston. Fortunately a nice older couple at the next table offered us a ride in to town. What a friendly place!
In any event, the work was totally worth the trip. The headline upgrade was the installation of a second Victron Quattro 5kva inverter to provide uninterrupted 240 volt 50 amp power from any combination of shore power, generator, or the house bank. No more manual load balancing, this just delivers the juice. We also installed a generator auto start that will kick on if the house bank drops below a threshold, so we can now leave the boat on the hook or a mooring with the freezers fully stocked if we need to step away mid trip.
For those of you who don’t know them, PTS is a cooperative of skilled tradesman who are a delight to work with and charge a third less than Seattle prices for top quality work. They assign a project manager who quarterbacks the whole team to take out your punch list quickly and efficiently. I won’t say on time and under budget, because that’s never the case with boats, but closer than any other yard I’ve worked with. We’ll be braving the winter seas to haul out with them again next year for sure.
The weather was mercifully better when we flew in on Thursday in a little Cessna 172 air taxi. We stopped at the Spruce Goose, the airfield diner, for outstanding pie and coffee when landed, only to find out that the only cab in town was on a run 30 miles away to Kingston. Fortunately a nice older couple at the next table offered us a ride in to town. What a friendly place!
In any event, the work was totally worth the trip. The headline upgrade was the installation of a second Victron Quattro 5kva inverter to provide uninterrupted 240 volt 50 amp power from any combination of shore power, generator, or the house bank. No more manual load balancing, this just delivers the juice. We also installed a generator auto start that will kick on if the house bank drops below a threshold, so we can now leave the boat on the hook or a mooring with the freezers fully stocked if we need to step away mid trip.
For those of you who don’t know them, PTS is a cooperative of skilled tradesman who are a delight to work with and charge a third less than Seattle prices for top quality work. They assign a project manager who quarterbacks the whole team to take out your punch list quickly and efficiently. I won’t say on time and under budget, because that’s never the case with boats, but closer than any other yard I’ve worked with. We’ll be braving the winter seas to haul out with them again next year for sure.