Making Ice on Eximius

 We can make ICE on Eximius

At the end of a long day sailing, after push in the morning to get the boat underway, working the lines all day to get the most out of the winds towards where we want to be and then the last effort to get the boat secured - By Lines ashore, Anchor or a Mooring. At the end of that day - that's when a glass of wine or a shot of pussers rum poured over ice really hits the spot. We normally carry the Rum, but ensuring we have Ice to make it chilled is another thing.

Our sailing club has a WhatAp Channel for our club Cruisers, we use it to share our plans if heading out even if it's just to the local lake for a hang on the hook. On that channel, one skipper asked if we knew of a local store where we're planning to moor in Jensen Beach over the Memorial Day weekend. One response was to purchase an Ice Machine. That got me thinking - would that work for us on Eximius.

Two days later, my Ice Machine arrived from Amazon, after reading the manual and giving it an initial cleaning, we put it to the test!

Fill with tap water, plugged in the mains and then turned on, it began buzzing and the fan started whirring. Not too noisy!

Seven minutes later, 9 Ice Bullets popped out of the Ice maker and were scooped into the Ice Tray. How Cool is that! Yep, deliberate Pun.

Over the next two hours it produced about 2 Liters of Ice Bullets. Wow!

On the boat, we would not run it for 2 hours unless we were expecting guests. But it easily makes enough ice for a single drink with ice in just 7 minutes. 15 Mins and that's doubled.

I am impressed!

This week we'll take it down to the boat and let it try out. Plan is to strap it down in the V-Berth above the hanging locker. I've ordered appropriate hooks and buckles. The location is close to a 110v outlet and it's out of the way - I'll just have to put my clothing bag in another spot.

According to the Specs, the unit uses 1.8Amps at 110V or 198Watts or about 15amps from the Batteries. Easy!

See you on the Water and we'll be cool!

Paul

Securing the Dinghy to the Foredeck

Storing and Securing the Dinghy on the boat

We don't have Davits, YET! So we store the dinghy on the foredeck. It's lashed down with a line that reaches across the inverted dinghy and tied at each end to the Stanchions.

Not an ideal situation, it's a trip hazard when trying to go forward to work on the Anchor, so looking at the options. 

Some boats have chocks to which the dinghy is secured, either upright or inverted. In our case, if the dink was upright, then it would severely restrict visibility forwards from the Cockpit. So we store it inverted and for the same reason, we don't have chocks on which to secure the dink.

Footman Loops

The simple solution would be to install a set of pad eyes or footman straps.

The benefit of using Pad eyes is that they could also be used for other things but the Footman loops are very neat and work great for webbing.

I envisage webbing straps passing over the front and over the aft end of the dinghy, both with tensioners, that would be an easy solution.

View from the cockpit.

Looks pretty straight forward. Total of 4 Footman Loops and two ratcheting Straps.

Just have to figure out where the best place to mount the loops, or the Pad Eyes.

I would like to get this done before our planned trip to Jensen Beach in a couple of weeks.

Keeping it safe and simple.

See you on the water.

Paul