PRINCESS 61
BOAT MASTER OURBOATSAfter a busy summer, Harry Metcalfe makes plans to replace the generator
Top of the charters
Bateau9’s 2017 charter season
fizzled out rather more abruptly
than expected. After a busy August,
as soon as the calendar flipped to
September, bookings disappeared.
Yet I find September is one of the best
months for mucking about on boats
in the Riviera; the water is surprisingly
warm, the crowds have gone and the
evenings remain wonderfully balmy.
Still, the sudden end to the charter
season gave us the chance to catch
our breath and work out what jobs
needed doing over the winter.
Number one on the list was repairing
(or possibly replacing) the 16-year-old
17.5kW generator as it had decided
to consume a fair amount of coolant
alongside its more regular tipple of
marine diesel and everything pointedto a blown head gasket. Bateau9’s
full-time captain, Ben, had limped
through the final charter bookings by
topping it up every hour or so because
repairing it properly was not possible
due to the limited access to its snug
storage locker – the generator must
have been installed during the initial
build of the boat.
Since then, it has clocked up a not
inconsiderable 4,260 hours, more
than it ought to for its age. Then again,
charter guests seem to like the air
con to be running all the time, which
requires the generator to be running
continuously too.
Bateau9’s fancy sound system also
requires 240V to operate, even when
all you want to do is listen to the radio,
which is silly and needs sorting too.While a repair in situ might have been
possible during the off-season, what
was really needed was a replacement
generator, so I started scouring the
UK for one. Quotes for
a brand new one were coming in at
around £20,000, while a repair was
going to be at least £6,000 by the
time the generator had been stripped
and the head gasket replaced. But
with that many hours already clocked
up, what else would need replacing
once the engine had been stripped?
Then fate took a turn for the better
when Julien Birkenkamp, the engineer
from EDC, telephoned to say that he
was upgrading the generator on a
customer’s two-year-old Sunseeker 55
to cope with a new stabiliser system
that had recently been fitted. Thisrequired more power than the boat’s
current 14kW generator could muster.
The price for this two-year-old genset
with only 300 hours? After a bit of
haggling, £7,000 plus fitting, which is
now booked to happen when the boat
is out of the water during the annual
antifoul and hull polish session in May.
Another thing we learnt during the
2017 charter season was how useful
the new generation of prepaid multi-
currency cards can be. I have one
called the Revolut card, which is an
app-based ‘bank’ that allows me to
add credit to the card from my UK
bank account and then exchange
pounds into Euros (or other
currencies of my choosing) at highly
competitive live exchange rates, all
via the app on my phone. I used to
buy chunks of Euros via a specialist
UK broker to get the best rates but
now I can do it whenever I fancy via
this app at no cost. I also get an alert
every time Ben makes a payment on
the boat’s Revolut card, used for all
Bateau9’s general expenses.
Finally, if anyone is contemplating
moving their boat to the Med this
summer, I have recently halved the
price of the 12m berth in Port St Jean,
Cap Ferrat, where I used to keep my
previous Windy 37, Sevo. The lease
is valid until 31 December 2021 so
please get in touch via bateau9charter
@gmail.com if it’s of any interest!The old generator is
being replaced after
4,260 hours of useThe berth in Cap
Ferrat, which is now
up for grabs for €25KBateau9’s genset has
to run constantly
when the air con is on