It keeps the air fresh in a closed-up boat
Issue 118: Jan/Feb 2018
When cleaning our good old Island Packet 31 shortly after purchasing her, I noticed a little white mold on some of the wooden interior surfaces. This I wrote off to the fact that the boat had been on the hard for two years and had not been looked after as well as a boat that sees regular use. I assumed that a good cleaning would remove the mold, just as it had on our previous boat.
As usual, I would be proven wrong.
Clean-up done, we delivered the boat home to Montreal and had a great time using it. It was not long before we saw the mold returning in a few spots here and there. This time, we hit it with bleach, but that only delayed the return of the white pest.
At about the same time, my daughter developed an allergy that would affect her while on the boat. Suspecting the mold as the cause, we used a variety of store-bought mold remedies and steam-cleaned the cushions. Again, we enjoyed only temporary relief from the mold.
When we were shopping for boats, we had been mightily impressed that the Island Packet designers had thought to include nine opening ports and three opening hatches in a 31-foot boat. They provide plenty of ventilation when the boat is in use but, we realized, none at all when it’s closed up and not in use. We considered adding solar fans or Dorade boxes, but dismissed both options as ugly and unnecessary deck clutter.
Messing around in my workshop one day, I noticed two small 12-volt muffin fans of the kind used to cool the power supply in a PC tower. I reasoned there had to be a way to use them to ventilate the boat while it’s unattended. Back at the boat, I took a closer look at our portlights, which are the original 1985 Beckson ports. The lenses are secured with two thumbscrews at the bottom and, when opened, leave a nice gap above the gasket.
I made a template from cardboard to fit in front of the opening. I gave it a tab that slots into the gap at the top and two tabs and slots at the bottom to fit around the thumbscrews. When I was happy with the template, I transferred the shape to a piece of 1⁄2-inch plywood, marked where the two fans would be mounted, and cut holes for them. I painted the plywood black and, using brass screws, mounted the fans so they would blow air out of the boat. I connected the wires from the fans to a length of wire with a cigarette-lighter plug on the end. After replacing the 5-amp fuse in the cigarette-lighter plug with an appropriately sized 1-amp fuse, I was done. I took the new fan insert to the boat and installed it in the quarter-berth portlight, which opens into the cockpit and is conveniently close to a 12-volt outlet.
Leaving the fans on 24/7 has proven not to be an issue from a power-consumption perspective, as the solar panel seems to keep up very well. Another option would be to connect the shorepower and keep the batteries up using the battery charger. Since 12-volt muffin fans are readily available for $10 or less, this a low-cost solution to a common problem on unattended boats.
Because the portlight installation worked so well, I made a “winter” hatchboard with two 120-volt muffin fans that run full-time while the boat is on the hard. They have effectively eliminated that musty antifreeze smell often encountered when a boat is opened for the first time in the spring. We are lucky that the marina has no issues with boats being plugged into shorepower during the winter.
Installing the fans has pretty much resolved the mold issue, and my daughter is now unaffected by her allergies while on board the boat.
Matt Koch has been a sailor since the age of 6, when his father bought his first boat. Matt met his wife, Carolyn, 28 years ago at their local sailing club and they have been sailing together ever since. They sail their Island Packet 31 with their two daughters (ages 21 and 18), on Lac St-Louis in Montreal, and make an annual vacation pilgrimage to the Thousand Islands and Lake Ontario.
Thank you to Sailrite Enterprises, Inc., for providing free access to back issues of Good Old Boat through intellectual property rights. Sailrite.com
