What you need on a swinging mooring?

richardsnowstar said:
I am considering moving my boat from a marina to a swinging mooring. What should I buy to replace things like shorepower? Wind generator, solar panels or petrol generator? Any other things to consider?

Any advice is welcome.
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First, you need to know what your electrical consumption is. Then you'll know how much juice you need to put back into the batteries every day you spend aboard.

Unless you have a BIG photovoltaic installation, you're unlikely to keep up with heavy usage, but PV will work - roughly - 12 hours a day, so during the week it should replace what you took out during the weekend.

The same is true of wind generation, except that the wind does not always blow hard enough to get useful output.

If you're power hungry and spend lots of time aboard with fewer 'fallow' periods for the batteries to recover, then a petrol gen is probably the answer, and learn to live with the noise.

One other thing - can you add another battery or two (or upsize the ones you have) to give yourself more capacity and more reserve?

As an aside, Snowbird lives in a marina, but we rarely plug shorepower in for normal weekend sailing, relying on battery capacity and a recharge from a PV panel during the week.
 
richardsnowstar said:
I am considering moving my boat from a marina to a swinging mooring. What should I buy to replace things like shorepower? Wind generator, solar panels or petrol generator? Any other things to consider?

Any advice is welcome.
Click to expand...

It all depends on what you use and how much/many batteries you have to maintain. A portable generator is not practical, solar panels can be expensive but, if you only want to charge (trickle) a battery then a solar panel for a caravan from halfords or maplin £20 will do. Wind chargers are the same, a small one or a big one again depends on the power required and purpose. I have two Rutland wind chargers (913 Rutland) and three BP solar panels (total 225 watts) and never need to have any shore power connected, it all depends on your requirements. Call Marlec and speak to Lloyd West he will give you all the details of solar and wind you require for your individual needs.

Boatingdreams on Kindle also cover this and putting in your own swing mooring.
 
KS lives in a marina, but it's a fairly basic one without shore power.

The battery stays fairly well charged just from the engine, and that's without excessive motoring.

Pete
 
prv said:
KS lives in a marina, but it's a fairly basic one without shore power.

The battery stays fairly well charged just from the engine, and that's without excessive motoring.

Pete
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Yes, forget to mention - if you have a longish motor to and from the mooring that will also put a lot back into the battery at the beginning and end of the day.
 
Years ago when we were on a swinging mooring we had an Aerogen4 wind generator, the standard size one and this would recharge batteries to full between a Sunday night return and the following Friday evening ready to go again, even if we had returned with batteries well down, say to 55%.

We had both an Aerogen6 (the big one) and big solar panels on our last boat but were then in a marina so they were used only when away cruising, in which case the fixed solar panel at 75W was plenty good enough to cover weekending demands (including big fridge) without need for the wind generator. At anchor for longer periods we had another 120W panel to lay on deck and might also use the Aerogen6 to the point we had to turn off one or other solar panel to prevent overcharging as we had no regulator on them.
 
I've never had a marina berth except for one winter (during which the pontoons broke up and the boat was damaged, but that's another story), but have had a swinging moring for 27 years. My top tips are:

1. You need a hard dinghy kept on the foreshore near the boat - inflatables in the boot of the car get to be a real bore and frankly a disincentive to go to the boat on a blowy and rainy evening, whereas a dinghy that rows well and is ready to go is always a pleasure

2. Make sure your engine charges the battery well: ie fully and quickly. Since fitting an Adverc I've always had well charged batteries. This is the single most important thing.

3. A small solar panel producing maybe 0.3A is quite a good thing to rig when leaving the boat for a week or two: just lay it in the cockpit held down with bungy. It just beats the self discharge and provided its output is low enough compared to your battery capacity you won't need a regulator (lots of threads on the subject on these pages). It's by no means essential 'tho provided you have the Adverc.

4. Get in the habit of keeping water and fuel topped up. That way you can just set off any time of day or night, this freedom is the beauty of a swinging mooring (it's also much kinder on the boat).
 
richardsnowstar said:
I am considering moving my boat from a marina to a swinging mooring. What should I buy to replace things like shorepower? Wind generator, solar panels or petrol generator? Any other things to consider?

Any advice is welcome.
Click to expand...

Swinging mooring is a different way of life. Marina you can hop on and off at will - oops, left the book in the car - ah well - go and grab it ... easy ...
but - Swinging mooring - you've got a dinghy ride (or boat taxi ride if you're lucky) back to the drop off point and then to the car ...

But then - swinging moorings can be so much quieter. You don't get neighbours walking past or kids running up and down the pontoon, you don't have your fenders and warps out all the time with their continuous squeaking ...
you don't have shore power - so kettle is on gas and power consumption is monitored more closely!

What do you need to do to move from marina to swinging mooring - probably nothing - but it depends what you're using the boat for... you've identified charging as a major consideration - with a relatively small solar panel (20-30w) our (knackered) batteries are always topped up for when we get to the boat ... LED bulbs and an awareness of how much elec we're using means that we could stay on all weekend without needing to run the engine - but wouldn't be able to run the fridge either ...

What else do you need to consider? How are you going to get to the boat and back? You need a good tender and probably an outboard - these will get fairly heavily abused - most ppl I know have a tender they use for commuting and another one onboard for when they are away - you don't want to be packing/unpacking the tender every 5 minutes ...

Will the crew be happy with the break from facilities? If they're not happy then you won't be relaxed onboard ...
 
I assume from your question that you want to live aboard, otherwise a 30W solar panel is all you need to keep your batteries topped up. Swinging moorings can be quite uncomfortable, depending on how sheltered they are - check how long the longest fetch is - as well as wash from passing traffic. You might also check the small print of the mooring T's and C's - some are administered by local councils who expressly forbid living aboard.
It's also worth checking surrounding depths carefully, especially at very low tides, to guard against going aground on approach / leaving.
 
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As a lifelong swinger, I agree with most of the above. Generators small enough to live aboard will not give enough power for long enough to top up badly depleted batteries. Modern 'silent' generators as used by caravanners (to the intense fury of others on the site who can still hear it running!) can be used to power things during the evening - but how quiet is 'silent'? In a still anchorage one of these menaces can be heard at several 100m range. basically if its antisocial in a Marina, then it will be in an anchorage. Also, you have to be there to charge it all up, and you will have to store and handle petrol aboard. Diesel generators are generally too heavy and bulky for anything much under 40ft and are a great deal more expensive.

How much power to do you actually use living aboard? If you are running just a bit of lighting, and maybe a telly or laptop for an hour or so, and an eberspacher, then a 110ah service battery will need topping up every couple of days and can be stretched to 3 may be even 4 days in high summer If OTOH you have all the 'works' - computers, microwaves etc, then you will need more. A lot more, with the ability to keep it all charged up. An aerogen is far and away the best way to keep everything topped up between visits, with perhaps a solar panel for those elusive summer 'highs' we see so few of nowadays!
 
Good points being made about the shore to ship tender and somewhere to store it. We had an ancient and heavy 10ft double hull rigid thing with more fibreglass patches than I could count but were lucky to be able to keep this afloat on an outhaul at our YC. Also consider if your ride out might be a wet one either from waves or rain. We had a Poole mooring which in anything above F3 from the SW was a wet dinghy ride so we had to expect that or arrive on board with all the gear and food wet. We had fully waterproof bags from welded PVC for clothes and shopping trolley type heavy duty canvas/nylon bags for food with a cover over them. The best idea we saw was someone using a body bag, the type seen on TV in Silent Witness! Lifejackets, if you don't wear them all the time (we didn't) it helps to keep an old set in the back of the car just in case it isn't as benign as expected, especially if you live a long way from the boat.
 
So many different situations, so many different answers.

First of all, you haven't told us anything about the boat & how you use it. It it's a floating caravan full of fridge, heater, hifi etc you may need all the power you can get. But if you use the boat, the engine will cope with most needs, but a fridge IS a big power eater, as are tungsten lights.

Some tips, if there is no dinghy storage, use an inflatable to get aboard & then bring the boat to a quayside or jetty for loading. That way, lady (or older) passengers can get aboard easily without getting a wet bum & you don't need a dozen dinghy trips to get the week's supplies, clothing & bedding aboard (or ashore at the end of the trip).

Being on a mooring probably means you will use the boat more as you are already "out there" rather than parked up. 20 mins running the engine to get to open water will usually recharge the batteries enough for a days useage, but it does rather depend on how much you use. I hardly use any power as I have no fridge, few electronics & led/ flourescent & oil lighting.
 
richardsnowstar said:
I am considering moving my boat from a marina to a swinging mooring. What should I buy to replace things like shorepower? Wind generator, solar panels or petrol generator? Any other things to consider?

Any advice is welcome.
Click to expand...

Moved to a swinger last year - not as a liveaboard though.....

Things I have done following the move include:

Change of mindset.
Basically need to be more organised & REMEMBER things - guess how I learned that...:o:o
Acquired a rigid dinghy, launching trailer & outboard.
Waterproof bags for electonics etc (phone, keys, laptop)
Bought a smaller laptop (easier to move and less power consumption).
20W solar panel & regulator fitted - so far so good, the batteries have been topped up OK. (Except when son left things swithced on)
Different routine when leaving boat - which now includes switching batteries off at the isolators.
Being more frugal with electricity usage.

Further things to do:

Diesel heater as it gets a bit chilly.
Maybe another battery ( if I can work out where to fit one)
Replace lights with LEDs.
Ladder on the stern in case I fall in...:eek::eek: (Maybe that should be number 1 on the list)
Maybe a self powered iPod dock for music.
Probably another solar panel.

The pluses :-
Quieter mooring, waking up in a lovely place, lower expenditure, different way of boating

The minuses:-
Lower use of boat - especially popping down in the weekday evenings after work. Occasional tidal restrictions (but then we wait in the pub for the water to come back...:D), less sociable.
 
All of the above and we've found that we sail more often. Currently we still work so weekend from afar and it was often too much of a fag to leave the pontons for a short time when we were on a marina berth. The boat was becoming a floating c*****n. Now on the swinger we can just drop the mooring and off we go. Coming back is the same just pick up your mooring and bed down without the worry of your berth being given to a visitor or faffing about with mooring lines, shore power etc. Ok it's more effort on arrival and leaving but as long as you have a good tender, launch and storage facility and something close by for topping up water it is not too onerous. Wet sometimes, but hey we're supposed to be sailors! Which reminds me we did invest in some good quality waterproof bags for those (suprisingly few in the course of a 60 days a year on board season) occasions. We winter in a marina but will never willingly give up the swinger. In fact I had an email this afternoon from wifey bemoaning the fact that we wouldn't be on "her mooring" until March.
 
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