Has anyone had any experience installing a generator in the lazarette of the F-38 ? Thx fx
I have a 3 cyl. Northern Lights in the transom of my F44 catketch (24000 lbs displacement) and I can tell you that the weight of the generator affects longitudinal trim of the boat badly. The boat lies in her behind in such a way that the water run-offs on deck no longer work. But never having to worry about power is pure luxury. If you can place the generator in the engine compartment that would be much better. And take good care of sound insulation, mine has hardly any.
For tight spaces the Entec is nice. Quite inside it’s soundbox also. I once installed one in the stern area of a Catalina 400 and everything had to pass through an 11 inch opening. Sort of like building a ship in a bottle but it worked well and the owner was pleased.
George
Hi, Last year we installed a Fischer Panda 4000i at the back of the Port cockpit locker of our F-38 (Forever Freedom). We removed the glassed-in gas locker (we are now an all-electric boat) and then, because the generator was too large to go through the locker hatch, cut an access panel in the dividing bulkhead between the locker and the Starboard aft cabin and then slid the generator in to the locker and onto its pre-prepared plinth. It is mounted transversely and not fore/aft for ease of access to servicing areas and there is plenty of room to crawl around the side to get to the steering quadrant etc. The access panel was cut with a vibrating disc cutter (similar to the sort of thing used in hospitals to cut windows in plaster casts) so is very neat and you have to really look for it in the aft cabin to see it. Hope this helps.
Please remember that you should size the generator so that you can keep it loaded to 50-70%. Too many people have much too large of generators for their typical loads, which can lead to a bunch of motor related issues. I personally have a 3.5KW unit and it’s more than adequate for a 40/40.
– Geoff
Hi Geoff,
The Fischer Panda 4000i is rated for 3.5 kw continuous output and we use it for electric cooking with a 1 kw combi microwave and 2 kw induction hob, then we have a 2 kw reversible aircon system and an AC HRO watermaker. Most of the time the generator is loaded to about 50% but obviously more if we are running more than one main item, or the batteries are in need of a good charge - if we are cooking in the evening in an anchorage we usually run the cooker off the batteries through our Victron 2500 inverter - in the morning they then need a goodly amount of input.
Peter
I wish you a lot of luck with your FP. I had one and it was a piece of crap. Another FP owner and I used to have FP rebuilding “parties” in Belize. He carried a complete spare generator that we used for parts. I eventually ended up creating FischerPandaSucks.com and suing them. I walked away with enough to cover my legal bills, but not the cost of a new generator. However, other owners who related their own horror stories got great deals on new generators, but I got my pound of flesh. The larger generators seem to be fine, but the smaller ones run at too high of an RPM and are over-engineered for the job. It certainly wasn’t a good generator for a cruiser who didn’t have access to factory service. For your sake I hope that they’ve improved their reliability.
– Geoff
Hopefully the model we have has improved (?) - would not want to have to go through the hassle that you experienced - will now monitor everything very closely. Could not connect to the site you set up so assume it is no longer.
Peter
Yes, I had to take the site down and hand the domain name over to them as part of the settlement.
– Geoff