Hello Rod,

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Nice to hear from you. I did think of you when I was posting those photos, freezing away in the sub-zero Canadian winter temperatures while we were enjoying the best of a New Zealand summer!

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We enjoyed our time away. This was the test for the boat – how did it work out as a coastal cruiser for two people for 3 weeks, and it passed with flying colours. All the systems worked well including battery charging, toilet, and galley, and sailing. Even after three weeks and two people the boat did not seem too small. It would be nice to be able to stand up inside rather than shuffling around on one’s backside, but it was okay. The biggest drawback of the boat is lack of load carrying ability, but we took away too much stuff. Clothes we never wore, and we brought back a lot of uneaten food. I think I was preparing for an expedition to remote places when in reality food and water were available in many places we stopped. The lack of weight carrying ability affected windward performance in light airs, but had no noticeable effect when sailing off the wind. The top speed I saw was 11.2 knots, but I am sure we went a lot faster at times.

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Here is a summary of how things worked out:

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• Water, we carried 80 liters which is a lot of weight, but we like to have a solar shower each day and we do our dishes far too often. We topped up on water whenever we could.
• LPG stove, I swapped the single burner Butane camp stove for a proper 2 burner marine LPG stove a few months ago. With the butane stove we seemed to get through a cannister every day and a bit, so for three weeks we would need a lot of cannisters and it would be expensive. I carried a 2kg LPG bottle which I had refilled after two weeks and we had only used 1 kg which cost $5, so a lot cheaper to run than the butane stove, and with two burners food preparation is easier.
• Outboard, I thought of buying a separate 12 liter tote tank rather than using the internal tank on the motor, but did not in the end. We carried 15 liters of petrol which was too much, 10 liters would have been fine. We did motor for almost 10 hours one day when there was no wind and I found out just how far we could go on the 1.5 liter internal tank, which was a long way! The 6 hp motor was more than adequate, probably a 4hp would be fine.
• Electrics, no issues Our 120 watts of solar panels kept everything going just fine including the fridge switched on the whole time and using the tiller pilot during the whole of that long day of motoring. But this is the height of the New Zealand summer with a lot of sunshine hours, it might be different in the winter.
• Mainsail area could have been a bit larger to help with light air performance with all the weight we were carrying, I am down about 1.3 sqm over the designed sail area, but there were a few times when we had to reef the mainsail and even one day we had two reefs in the main, so at those times we had plenty of sail area.
• The Code 0 worked out well in light to moderate conditions. It is on a furler and once we used it the first time we kept it hoisted. I should have made the bowsprit a bit longer to keep the sail more away from the forestay. But bear in mind that our boat has a mast head rig rather than the fractional rig as in Bernd’s plans.
• During rough sea conditions we had a lot of water come up through the cockpit drains which are just 30mm diameter holes drilled through the cockpit floor, and also a lot of water through the cockpit locker drain. So I am going to modify all of these drains to try and stop the water ingress.
• Bilge keels, as you know I used the bilge keel option rather than a dagger board. I have to say that during this cruise I once again never noticed any lack of windward performance when I needed it so for me for what we are doing with the boat the bilge keels are working out just fine. ?
• The toilet worked out well, and that comment came from my wife who is hard to please when it comes to toilets! Really it is probably the best boat toilet I have ever had and it cost almost nothing. The fact that the urine drains directly overboard helped, and we emptied the solids bucket once a week, But no smell and much easier than a chemical toilet where you need to lug the heavy tanks in and out of the boat. In New Zealand we are not allowed to discharge raw sewerage when close to shore so the composting system I had is I think preferable to a complex, expensive, and troublesome holding tank system.
• Dinghy is always an issue on such a small boat. We carried a 2.1 meter inflatable dinghy which weighs only 12 kg. It is really only a two person dinghy and I would not want to row it a long distance. On longer passages we deflated the dinghy and carried it rolled up on the foredeck. At other times I experimented with towing the dinghy, or carrying it inflated on either the cabin top or foredeck, but it always got in the way. In the end for short distances I would pull the anchor up, and then pull the dinghy on deck and carry it upside down partially on the foredeck, and partially on the cabin top on the port side. It got in the way of the jib a bit like this but it was the best solution.

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But that is it. The Eco 6 is a big 6 meter boat and we enjoyed it. This is the smallest yacht we have owned, the others all being 9 meters to 11 meters. But despite its small size the Eco 6 is an enjoyable boat on which to spend time and works well for us as a coastal cruiser, especially with some of the modifications I have made such as moving the aft cabin bulkhead a little bit further aft, and that companionway dodger is a good addition. Apart from the issues I have mentioned I would not change anything else.

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David

Hello Andrew,

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Yes you are right about the difference between power output of a panel, and current output. My 60 watt panels have a maximum rated output current of 3.2 amps, which is interesting because at 5.84 amps going into the battery it means that I am achieving close to maximum output from the panels. Of course this does not happen most of the time. I think my solar controller meter is displaying both the input amperage to the controller, and the output amperage after the controller computer has maximised the output voltage of the panels. In my research when deciding to switch to an MPPT controller it seems that MPPT controllers provide a consistent output improvement over the PWM controllers of 17% plus, and this would be my experience.

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Cheers,

David