"Doug Dotson" wrote:


"Rosalie B." wrote in message

We have heard the same from folks that cruise in the tropics and near
tropics also. They do not like wind generators and take them off and
go exclusively with solar panels. We however like ours very well. It
works especially well at night when the sun doesn't shine and when it
is cloudy, which it sometimes is up here in the Chesapeake. It is not
dangerous or noisy, but it also does warn us when the wind is cranking
up.

Our KISS normally doesn't wake us up as it is very quiet. Plus it is mounted
on the stern and we sleep in the V-Berth.

Well we sleep in the aft cabin (center cockpit boat with the wind gen
on the radar arch right over our head). We wouldn't hear it at all in
the V berth of course.

I've asked other folks what they hear when it is on, and some say that
they can't hear it on their boat (next to us in a marina - turning it
on so that they can listen) and some say they can't hear it at all.

When it's squall time at 3 am and the wind kicks up to 35 kts with
cold driving rain - who wants to go on deck to turn it out of the wind
and secure it. They all sound like a Cessna on the back deck trying to
do a short field takeoff. And they **** off you neighbors.

I just flick a switch from inside the boat to shut the wind generator
down.
Better yet, the charge controller senses the high wind situation and
shuts
it down automatically until the wind calms down to an acceptable level.
Swinging the mill by hand is both dangerous and archaic.

We don't have to go outside the boat either - the wind gen turns
itself off if the wind gets too high, or we have a switch inside that
we can turn it off when we are in a marina and don't want to disturb
our neighbors. Some neighbors are easier to disturb than others.
Some neighbors I'd like to disturb because they disturb me, but Bob
restrains me.

Running a wind generator in a marina is rude! Never any good reason
to do so.

Yes there is. If there is no electrical hookup. And I don't see that
during the day it is rude - after all boat engines make much more
noise and no one says that starting your engine in a marina is rude.

Running a genset in the marina is also rude, and I've been beside
people who do that with their exhaust right by our ports.

There are other things that folks do in marinas that I think are ruder
than running the wind gen which basically doesn't make as much noise
as the wind itself does.

This includes:
Power boats with large spotlights up on the tower who run them all
night, shining them down into other people's cockpits
People with in mast furling. Makes more noise than a windgen


We'd like to have a genset for among other things to refill the scuba
tanks. What we have now is engine driven refrigeration, which we run
twice a day.

12 volt belt driven holding plate systems work well. The genset is a
nice complement. We run our genset for an hour in the morning to pull
down the cold plates and recharge the batteries and make coffee. Run
it again in the early evening to pull down the plates, recharge the
batteries
and make hot water.


Well when we run the engine driven refrigeration (which we run for no
more than 45 minutes morning and evening), the engine makes the hot
water and recharges the batteries if they need it.

grandma Rosalie