Dorade vents- why bother?

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GHA

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Well that was no great surprise, finally get round to removing the 2 dorade vents above the main cabin, steel boat. Why on earth do people stick wood to metal? Always gonna rust eventually. So boxes trashed getting it all apart and some nasty rust where they were.
So tempted just to weld up the holes,
do dorade vents actually do much, why keep them?
For a cooling breeze they don't do much at all, a wind scoop does far more and as it's a liveaboard there's always hatches open anyway. So why not just ditch them, free up some valuable wide deck space.

Tia
 
If you are always going to be on board with hatches open, it makes sense to remove them, but if you are at sea or the boat is left uninhabited for any time then they are unsurpassed for providing secure ventilation.
 
I spent a long time building beautiful teak Dorade boxes for my last boat - ten years later I scrapped them...

Here's why:

1. If the cowl vent stem is less than 4" in diameter and if the cross sectional area at the baffles is less than that, the volume of air passing through the Dorade box will be negligible. See Ian Nicholson 's Boat Data Book.

2. If you do adhere to those dimensions, you have built yourself a world class rope and shin catcher.

I keep my boat on a swinging mooring and by leaving a cockpit locker lid open under a cockpit cover with an opening aft and leaving the forehatch part open, either with "ears" or under the rigid dinghy, which makes the world's biggest mushroom vent, I get a howling draft through the whole boat...
 
They do seem like a complex way of achieving very little.
I keep my forehatch cracked open and have a cockpit cover which allows me to leave the washboards out, and I get a lovely breeze blowing through the length of the boat, everywhere except the heads, which has its own dorade vent but is always drowning in condensation.
 
My three dorade vents work a treat. Never have condensation or that manky boat smell on first opening up.

The forward one is in the heads, and I can feel the passive ventilation when sitting on the can, but the through-boat ventilation relies on the door being left open.
 
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Getting more and more tempted to ditch them. That deck space would be lovely, and looking at the area, it shouldn't be hard to cut a coupe of new holes and fit little portholes looking forward.
Maybe fit a little vent with a computer fan ? Can you get mini dorade type things to get air in without the water? Sort of like a solar vent without the solar?
 
I have an AWB and for the last 18 months have put the two deck hatches on a vent setting while the boat is empty. Fortunately the design works well and virtually no water gets in, except in horizontal rain conditions and even then very little. Since doing this no condensation, damp, mold or smells in winter or summer. The boat is laid up for 3 months over winter with no heat or dehumidifier. I am now looking at options for a more suitable solution to get a flow of air through the boat. Don't think dorade vents would look right but would seem ideal.
 
I think if you are in the UK they provide some useful but minimal ventilation to keep a little air circulation. Here in the Caribbean they are completely useless. We ditched two of ours when we replaced the teak decks. We now have a nice large area to chill on with no dorade boxes in the way.
 
IMG_3269_zpsneehkwpf.jpg


This is the original drawing of the Dorade vent, as fitted to Dorade, from Uffa Fox's 1934 book "Sailing, Seamanship and Yacht Construction"

Note the dimensions...
 
If you've ever sailed upwind under trade wind conditions, you'd be very grateful for every molecule of fresh air below. Talk about steamy windows!
 
We have a couple of those little plastic jobs. In Northern European conditions their effect is noticeable, and you can always swivel them when needed. I have little likelihood of sailing in the trade winds, but they do seem to work better than those dome types. Mine are currently being used to stow my socks.
 
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