Equipment Comments
Page 3
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Fireboy Automatic fire extinguisher system
In January, 2011 our friends on Visions of Johanna had a fire in their engine room started by some electrical failure. They had just arrived in Gulf Harbour Marina when it happened, so they were lucky to be safe but the damage was extensive. I had long considered having an automatic system in our engine room and this was the wake up call to do it now. I choose the Fireboy system, which automatically discharges Chlorotetrafluoroethane when the temperature reaches 79 degrees C (175 degree F). It will flood the engine compartment in less than 10 seconds for fast smothering of the fire and leaves no harmful residue to clean up.
We installed MA2 series that has automatic discharge as well as a manual discharge switch at the helm.
Another safety item we have put off buying is a trysail. Trysails are used in storm conditions to give a small size mainsail. After our problems with the in-mast furling system (which we still think is a great thing) we decided that having a back-up small mainsail would be a good insurance policy. We hope to never use it.
The interior lighting in Tenaya is excellent, with ceiling lights and "mood" lights along the sides. But the energy use was so high that we seldom used them. Now we have replaced all bulbs with LED lights and are very happy with the result. LED lights we had looked at a few years ago never seemed anywhere close to "warm" but today's lights are much better. And, best of all, we will use them without worry about the amount of power used.
Tenaya has a removable cutter stay for use with a storm jib. If we are in conditions where we may want to use the storm jib we can have the stay already connected and the sail ready to go. But having a loose sail on deck is not a good solution so while we were in Gulf Harbour, New Zealand I made a sailbag to allow us to keep the jib attached to the stay and ready to use. Beth Leonard kindly explained the storm jib bag they use and her ideas of things they would change.
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