Impactful Upgrades

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New Zealand means great friends, beautiful country, delicious food, amazing activities, and lots of boat work.  This third trip is no different – did a lot of little upgrades and lot of big upgrades that will have a huge impact to our daily lives.

This blog post will focus on the “little but powerful upgrades.”

Chart plotters at each Helm

Over the past 15 years we’ve sailed 70,000 nautical miles across the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.  We’ve visited over 35 countries and truly love our boat/home. 

However, we have never had a chart plotter at the helm.  We’ve had a handheld Garmin 73 (with satellite and tracks), but no chart plotter.  We’ve had to either zip into the salon to see the multitude of charts on the navigation station or rely on Navionics on the iPad.  Not ideal, but it worked for us.

Finally, it was time to upgrade the helms.  The first thing we did was fabricate a new pedestal extension at each helm.  Each helm station has a pedestal and an additional small extension where our Garmin holder, Raymarine gauge, stereo remote, (2) anchor controls, a small control panel, and the IridumGo antenna lived.

Matt disconnected all of the gauges and instruments first. Then with loads of patience he removed the 5200 holding the back extension.

We cleaned up the front and back and removed the 5200 excess.  

Our friend, Ian on Tavake (a Catana 431) told us to use fabricator Scott Banks.  Super nice guy! 

Scott came out, took a bunch of measurements, gave us a reasonable quote, collected the pedestal extensions, and told us he’d be back in 2 weeks. 

Unfortunately it took way longer than 2 weeks, but we are very pleased with the final product (see below).

Chart Plotters

We purchased (2) B&G Zeus 9 Chart plotters from Marine Deals.  It took 6 weeks to get delivered and cost approximately $1400 USD each.

The other controls (small control panel allows us to turn on/off 6 items, stereo remote control, and (2) anchor controls will go on the new pedestal extension.

We had to move the existing Raymarine P70 gauge to a new Marine Pod mount which will sit to the side of each helm. 

Marine Pods for Raymarine Gauge

We could have made the pedestal extension large enough to accommodate all of our equipment.  However that would block the view from the helm seat. 

In order to keep the view we went with a smaller pedestal extension and a marine pod mount for the gauge.

We purchased (2) marine pod mounts to move the Raymarine Autopilot (ST60) gauges to the sides of the pedestals. 

The pods are called Seaview SP1BOX Marine Pod Kit . We bought them on ebay for $95 USD each

LC Hydraulics (Phillip) fabricated two mounting holders for the new PODs.  It took about 2 days and cost $855NZD.

The white square is the pod and the two holders are for each helm.

The new upgraded helm stations are amazing! 

With the new helm extension holding our chart plotters and our new pod’s holding our gauge!  

Purchasing and Contact Info:

  • Scott Banks, Fabricator, Whangarei, NZ +64.22.380.3972.  Fabricated the helm pedestal extensions and the window rain flashing
  • Chart plotters purchased from Marine Deals, www.marine-deals.co.nz
  • Raymarine gauge mount : Seaview SP1BOX Marine Pod Kit New Open Box Accessory Mount for GPS VHF Display purchased from eBay
  • Marine Deals +64 09 281 3150, www.marine-deals.co.nz, Auckland, NZ
  • LC Hydraulics, www.lchydraulics.co.nz/, +64.21.0285.5072

Design specs of the chart plotter that we used as a base for the helm pedestal extension.

Our blog posts run 10-12 weeks behind actual events.  

We started working on these little upgrades as soon as we arrived in New Zealand (Oct.2025-Jan.2026).

These are just a few of the massive projects we completed. 

See our full list on our “Hauling out at Norsand Boatyard” blog post.

Brrr….The Air Con is On

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We have “managed” through the hot tropics of French Polynesia, Fiji, and Tonga.  However, we really struggled through the intense heat in the Marshall Islands, Tuvalu, and Kiribati.  So, we decided it was time for air con (air conditioning).

Our friend, Dan on Sel Citron told us about some very reasonable aircon units made in China.  These units are the same units provided to Mabru sold by Hopewell.

We were originally going to order the units direct from Hopewell (via Fanny Zhu). 

However, in talking with our electrician Matthew Duckett at Cleigh Ltd. we discovered we could order the same (2) units, (3) pumps, vents, and ducting through him for the same price.  

We ordered (2) 12V DC Air Conditioners from Matthew at Cleigh who then ordered them from Hopewell in China (Mabru). 

One unit is 12,000BTU and will cool the main salon.  The other unit is 7,000BTU and will cool the starboard master cabin.

We also ordered a variety of grills and ducting (which we heard were hard to source in NZ)

I will break down the two units by location:

12k Unit (Salon)

125mm:  2 outlet vents at corners of the settee (where existing fans are).  The main unit will live under the settee and the return air will be at feet level. 

Grills: wood square outlets. However, we ordered a white round and black round as a backup (f the ‘squares’ don’t fit).  

Matt and Matthew putting the salon AC in place under the settee.

AC Pedestal (stand)

Matt built a pedestal for the salon AC unit.  The floor was a little uneven and we needed the unit to be stable.  So, he used his carpentry skills to make the bench, then he sealed it, painted it, and secured it to the floor and sides of the settee.  This unit will not move!

7k Unit (master bedroom)

100mm: 2 outlets over the bed.  Need 100mm splitter to 100 vents (most likely ABS, but also ordered wood just in case install location has to change).

The return air most likely ABS (but ordered wood and aluminum). 

The actual unit will need to be mounted behind the ceiling false panels.  This requires a holding bracket.  

Holding Bracket in the Master Cabin

Matt created a mock up of the smaller aircon unit, true to size, to help design the holding bracket. 

We brought in Premik (from Norsand) to create the brackets out of fiberglass.

Everything was removed from the cabin so it could be properly protected.

Premik now has full access to sanding and fiber glassing in a contained space. 

We were kicked out of our bedroom for over a month as we finished this project.

Accessories for the Aircon

Matt spent the better part of the holiday break running hoses and cables for both units. 

Matt drilled three thru holes (holes in the boat)  for each unit for water intake, outtake, and exhaust.

Matthew Duckett helped Matt add a new “bus”, move our existing “bus” and run a lot of wires and cables. 

He did some excellent boat yoga to get into these very tight places.

Final Installation

Once the brackets were made the units were installed. 

Then we ran the wires and hoses and made the thru hulls.  The last part was connecting it all and adding freon. 

We had to wait until we splashed and were in the water to add the freon.

We hired Jock from Big Fridge to help us with the freon.  Jock added freon while we were berthed at Port Nikau. And we are up and running.

Now we are ready for the heat and humidity of Indonesia and Malaysia. 

Contacts:

  • Cleigh Ltd: Matthew Duckett, matthew.duckett@cleagh.com
  • Hopewell: http://hopewellchina.en.alibaba.com/, Fanny Zhu: hehebiz@163.com
  • Lusty Blundell: https://www.lusty-blundell.co.nz/ 

Pricing

As of November 2025 the pricing was as follows (USD):

  • 12V DC 12K BTU (Z12DC12) $1,380
  • Pump $95
  • 12V DC 7K BTU  (Z07DC12) $1,280
  • Pump $95
  • Various Grills/Vents in wood, metal, black, white ranges from $5-$20 each
  • 7m of air ducting ranges from $10.50-$12
  • Various hoses, connectors, clamps, elbows were purchased from Cleigh Ltd (Lusty Blundell)
  • Shipping for 2 units $895

Our blogs run 8-10 weeks behind actual live events.  We worked on the Air Con from Nov. 2025-Jan.2026.

We will power our air con units with our new solar panels – check out the blog post.

Power Up: New Solar Panels

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After living on the boat, full time, for the past 9 years we have decided we “need” (aka “want”) more solar power.  Currently we have 1200 watts of solar panels coming from (8) Solara Ultra 150 panels.  This solar power gets us through perfectly well on sunny days. 

However, if we have a 3+ cloudy days we end up having to run our portable Honda EU32IU Generator.

Our goal is to have enough solar to get us through 6-7 cloudy days.  In addition, more solar will allow us to run our additional Engle (portable freezer), Starlink 24/7, and our new aircon.

Extra solar will allow us to have a lot more electrical and power freedom.

New Solar Panels

We ordered (4) Sun Power P7 – 455W bifacial panels from Hubands Energy.  These 4 new panels will provide us with an additional 1800 wats (total of 3,000 wats combined with our original panels). Technically, the new solar panels could potentially generate 2,184 as they are bifacial capturing the sun from the water’s reflection.

We paid about $150 USD per panel including GST and delivery.

The problem is that we have nowhere to put additional panels without building a solar arch. 

The only place for this arch is on the aft of the boat over the davits.

Be sure to read our next blog post on the building of our solar arch.

Install

We had to drill holes into the solar panel frames to fit them onto their custom designed brackets.  Always nerve racking when you put a drill close to your glass panels.

No issues with the drilling so we moved on to the wiring.

We run “mouse lines” through the arch to make it easier to run the thicker cables once the arch is up.

Next up we install each panel while it is on the ground and easier to access.

The new panels are embedded between the bars so there is no overhang.  We wanted it to look super clean from all sides.

We are very happy with the final look.

Contacts

  • Stainless Fabricator: Phil Waddell hardout98@icloud.com and his wife Joy Waddell joyw2@icloud.com
  • Hopewell: http://hopewellchina.en.alibaba.com/, Fanny Zhu: hehebiz@163.com
  • Cleigh Ltd Matthew Duckett, New Zealand, +64 21 890 697, matthew.duckett@cleagh.com 
  • Hubands, https://hubands.co.nz, Travis travis@hubands.co.nz 

Our blog posts run 6-8 weeks behind actual live events. 

We worked on these upgrades at Norsand Boatyard in Whangarei, New Zealand.

Be sure to check out our post on the new solar arch installation.