Sunday, September 27, 2015

Speaking of Fans...

When we outfitted our boat for cruising we knew that we would need good fans so we bought three of those expensive Caframo Sirocco ones. We enjoyed their three speeds, timer settings, and fully articulated brackets for several months, but then they started acting up; they would shut off within seconds of turning them on; they would only do one speed; or they wouldn't come on at all.

We cleaned them and fiddled around with the connections, but never could get them to work properly. We put up with that for a couple of months and finally took them all apart and bypassed the switches. They now run 24/7 unless we turn off the circuit to that part of the boat. Which is never because it's so darn hot here. They still look pretty good, and the motor must be well built, but the switches and internal connectors are a bad design.

Somewhere along the way, in desperation, we bought a few 120v fans. They are cheap and they last several months. The 120v issue doesn't matter because we have our inverter on nearly all the time anyway and they use very little power. We can move them around and aim them directly at our sweaty bodies. They caress us with a gentle breeze. We sometimes argue over who gets to be near them. We can't sleep without them. We cry when one dies. I think we are in love with these fans. 

We also have two of these Hella fans that were on the boat when we bought it. They are quiet, have a simple mechanical switch, and still run fine, but they don't seem to move quite as much air as the other fans.

So there you have it; we have eight fans on our boat; three are fine since we rewired them, two are old and small but functional, and three use 120v but we treat them like lovers.


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