Wife says its ether 240V, or she won’t come cruising.

[BigJoe]

Wife says its ether 240V, or she won’t come cruising.

Help……………………………….


I posted this on 2 other forums, just thought you guys would have some input as well.

I am in a dilemma, I have shore power that supplies 240V when alongside, but nada when cruising and anchor hopping.
The Mrs, apparently, wont go more that 3 day without using her GHD hair straighteners.
I have looked at a diesel inboard gen set but the 15K price tag scared me off ( I am Scottish eh ).
I was thinking of in inverter, but would I need to increase my alternator size ? and battery bank ?, or would a cheep and nasty petrol generator do a job.

Thanks in advance for any help or tips.

 

[tri39]

How many watts is the hair straightener? A large inverter may be enough.
3 days at a time may be enough anyway!

 

[charles_reed]

without more info

It's a rash man who'd express an opinion.

How many watts does the appliance draw?
How many AH do the batteries give?
How long do you intend to anchor at a time? probably not long in the W and Central Med.
Could you change your wife? - thinking laterally that might be the simplest option.

 

[idpnd]

Why do you need a diesel generator for that? Get a 300 GBP petrol one innit

 

[KellysEye]

>hair straighteners

As somebody said in another forum you can get gas powered versions. Which surely solves the problem.

 

[Bajansailor]

Hair straighteners??

Maybe suggest to Mrs BigJoe to grow dreadlocks instead - that would solve a lot of problems.......

 

[rickym]

I may stand corrected but I thought the gas ones were 'styling tongs' (curlers) not straiteners.At least that is what SWIMBO's are.

What would I know though, No3 all over and polish the bit in the middle!

 

[Roberto]

Wife says its ether 240V, or she won’t come cruising.

Help……………………………….

Politely ask her to keep two naked 240v wires in her hand then plug the other side for a fraction of a second

should she insists about 240v, plug it a second time and go for a walk

problem solved either way :laugh:

 

[KellysEye]

>I may stand corrected but I thought the gas ones were 'styling tongs' (curlers) not straiteners.

You can use them for both purposes as far as I know.

What worries me is that all the sailor's wives we know (and we know hundreds of them) don't care a damn about their hair, makeup, dresses, skirts, high heels or indeed anything they would normally do as dirt dwellers. I think BigJoe might have a problem on his hands

 

[sailinglegend420]

To answer the original posting - if the lady wants 240 volts and you want to go sailing then you need to seriously consider the options. Search the archives here and you will find lots of sensible answers!

I suspect the straightners are low wattage so a low power inverter would cope, but I'm sure her hair dryer will take much more power, so you need to consider the maximum wattage she might need.

If you are cruising a lot and looking to have AC then make sure you use it for other things too - like microwave, George Formans, heating you hot water when the solar shower hasn't been put out. etc.

Just to recap my other postings we have a 4KVA diesel DC generator and a 2.5Kva inverter, so AC is always available. The DC genny also charges the batterries at 250 amps so you need a large battery bank to cope with this. The DC option is much smaller and much much quieter than an AC genny.

 

[Abraxas33]

No problem!

Wife says its ether 240V, or she won’t come cruising.

Help……………………………….


I posted this on 2 other forums, just thought you guys would have some input as well.

I am in a dilemma, I have shore power that supplies 240V when alongside, but nada when cruising and anchor hopping.
The Mrs, apparently, wont go more that 3 day without using her GHD hair straighteners.
I have looked at a diesel inboard gen set but the 15K price tag scared me off ( I am Scottish eh ).
I was thinking of in inverter, but would I need to increase my alternator size ? and battery bank ?, or would a cheep and nasty petrol generator do a job.

Thanks in advance for any help or tips.

Mrs Abraxas uses her GHD's off our 500watt inverter - the GHD's are rated much lower than 500W but have a high 'starting' current so a lower powered inverter may lock up (switch off to protect the inverter). Having timed her with my trusty stop watch I can confirm the batteries don't suffer much - best guess would be 100W GHD's - about 9 amps driving the inverter for 10 minutes = 1.5 amp/hours

Pleeease don't buy a generator!

 

[JamesFrance]

Pleeease don't buy a generator!

I second that, or if you do never run it in an anchorage if it can be heard from other boats.

 

[sailinglegend420]

I second that, or if you do never run it in an anchorage if it can be heard from other boats.

Another good reason to buy an DC generator and have it very well insulated. Ours in under the bed and you can hardly hear it when sitting in the cockpit - it just sounds like a quiet water pump.

 

[Fantasie 19]

Save the money and sail solo...

Alternatively, would these do??

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/12V-Hair-Stra...vr_id=&cguid=d83c3ed711c0a0e20212b062ffe87b28

 

[V1701]

>I may stand corrected but I thought the gas ones were 'styling tongs' (curlers) not straiteners.

You can use them for both purposes as far as I know.

What worries me is that all the sailor's wives we know (and we know hundreds of them) don't care a damn about their hair, makeup, dresses, skirts, high heels or indeed anything they would normally do as dirt dwellers. I think BigJoe might have a problem on his hands

Ah but at least she's not flat out refusing to do it, which many spouses (I refuse to use SWMBO) would, so if her wishes are accommodated (by the cheapest/quietest/most convenient method) and she goes cruising, all to the good. Down the line she may well become less bothered...

 

[Obi]

An interesting ordering of her priorities. Anyway, I have about 500ah of battery, solar and wind charging, and a 300 watt invertor wired through to sockets for laptops/phone chargers etc.
I have no hair to worry about, but my partner found the invertor wont power her straighteners. A marine engineer freind said that a pure-sine wave invertor is required for things like straighteners, and I think that possibly a few extra watts might help? Just something to bear in mind.

Im not saying this is right, just what I was told by someone who has fitted invertors all his career.

M

 

[BrianH]

I refuse to use SWMBO

I applaud you and wait, forever in hope, for all others to phase out this absurdity of an acronym, longer and more difficult to type than any possible alternatives and that long since passed its 'sell by date' of in-joke netiquette.

 

[Centesimus]

Big start up currents!
Pure sign inverter!
Are we talking about a compressor or hair straighteners? Hair straighteners will have a small resistive load heater in them. That means in english, that they don't care about the wave form and there defiantly won't be a big start up current. So a small inverter will do the job.
Anyway I think we might be missing the point here. I don’t think hair straighteners are anything to do with it. Either BigJoe and Wife have sat down and decided that 240V would be nice and it was just an amusing way of posing the question, in which case a list of all the equipment you want to run might produce some sensible answers. Or the wife in question doesn't want to go cruising and if the hair straightener problem is resolved she’ll just think of another one.

Or I might be missing the point and it might be about hair straighteners after all.

 

[V1701]

I may stand corrected but I thought the gas ones were 'styling tongs' (curlers) not straiteners.At least that is what SWIMBO's are.

What would I know though, No3 all over and polish the bit in the middle!

I applaud you and wait, forever in hope, for all others to phase out this absurdity of an acronym, longer and more difficult to type than any possible alternatives and that long since passed its 'sell by date' of in-joke netiquette.

Thank you. And do you find SWIMBO even more maddening than SWMBO?

 

[BrianH]

And do you find SWIMBO even more maddening than SWMBO?

Naturally and predictably – even more cringe-worthy.

It never was very funny – at least to this humour-challenged old fart, but then I never appreciated John Mortimer's writing and as a long-term expatriate I did not have to suffer any of the Rumpole episodes.

I suppose some of the use on these fora is to cover the vague status of many relationships and a strange reluctance to actually use the word “wife” - perhaps it has assumed the conation of middle-aged frumpiness. I don't know and again, expatriate life in a non English-speaking environment freezes one in a semantic time-capsule.

I am reminded of an article by the late American humourist Art Buchwald in the International Herald Tribune many years ago. He recounted the difficulty, in the first person, of a older man escorting his somewhat younger and attractive live-in partner to a party and the problem of how to introduce her – this was before the present level and social acceptance of such relationships.

It seemed silly to refer to the lady as his 'girl friend' – she had long ago left her girlhood and to say she was his 'friend' was simply too neutral and would not signal the correct 'hands off' intention that he wanted to convey. Equally, to call her a 'partner' implied a business relationship and would not keep the circling wolves at bay. Buchwald, in hilarious prose, then itemised all possible adjectives and nouns in an attempt to clarify their relationship without finding a satisfactory solution.

The article terminated with the final sentence: “And so I married her”.