DH 550

Ausstattung & Aufteilung

Air Conditioning. This is an area where we went more than big! There is a total of 75000 BTU of air conditioning power on board, 16000
for each aft cabin and 43000 for the saloon.
The forward cabin does not have a dedicated unit but will cool down with the saloon area adequately unless the cabin door is closed..
The only restriction here is that there is not enough power supply with neitherthe shore power supply or the generator if one uses all the air conditioning units at once. One unitof the fourhas to wait it's turn, this should hardly be a problem as one would use areas at different times. We used Cruisair marineair
conditioners from the USA, to say they are efficient is an understatement, the boat cools
down in minutes.

Navigation

Electronics. We chose Garmin for all the sailing electronic equipment and it has worked well for the 12000 odd miles we have sailed so far, there is a chart plotter at the helm
station with autopilot alongside and the two are integrated which means the autopilot can be controlled from either. The autopilot machine is
a rotary type which I rate very highly having used one right around the world without a moment's trouble. In full view of the helm station are two displays which can be personally configured we have speedand depth
on one and wind direction, strength etc. the two motor controls and dials are also there along with the binnacle magnetic compass.
Above ones head we have mounted various gauges, fuel and water, electricity management
DC and AC and the Lewmar AA 560 Auto Anchor control dial, which I must admit we have not mastered yet. Also mounted there is the control panel for the generator.The VHF radio is mounted on the left of the helm station, with the autopilot hand held control mounted next to it. On the right of the helm we have the Fusion dvd/cd player which has 8
speakers, 4 in the saloon, 2 at the foredeck and 2 for the aft cockpit, all of which can also
be controlled in the master cabin.

Segel

Sparcraft in Cape Town built the rig from two 11 metre lengths of appropriate Aluminium sections and while the design called for a 21 metre high mast, discarding a metre from one of the sections did not appeal to us so we contacted Dudley to see if we could just join the two sections and have a 22 metre high mast which we thought would look better. Dudley had no issue with the idea as long we stuck religiously to the rest of the plan and changed nothing else.

We chose North Sails South Africa for this project and they produced a very efficient suit of sails, the self tacking Genoa and fully battened mainsail with its three deep reefing points drive the boat easily, we found when ocean crossing that an extra reef hardly affected speed through the water but made the ride much more comfortable and the autopilot coped so much better. There is a storm jib/trinquette combination sail which can be reefed andset in two different modes
depending on the wind strength andthis sail is set on a separate stay set up when required without too much effort at all. We found it efficient when going dead downwind in breeze to set the furling Genoa to one side and the Trinquette on the other and leave the mainsail down.

Deckgear. We chose Lewmar for the deck hatches and for the deck hardware and running blocks and all the running rigging and
sheets are controlled from the centre cockpit in front of the centrally placed helm station by means of two very powerful Electric Lewmar
winches and a series of well placed jammers, 21 in total, all led towards the winches. At first one might be scepticalbut with a little practice
the system is understood and much
appreciated because it works. My wife and I sailed the boat very easily across the North Atlantic in twenty days from St. Martin to Gibraltar. The custom made Dinghy davitsare
operated by means of a Lewmar 45 hand powered winch which also serves as a strong point aft of the vessel in case of need.

She is registered in South Africa and has just entered the European Union
around 17th September from Turkey and entered Greece at Leros. She is
currently on the hard at Leros Marina.
The boat has been very carefully and lovingly built for long term cruising, We sailed the boat from Cape Town to the Caribbean and then from St Martin to St. Tropez and then to Leros in 2017. The boat took this very easily in her stride, some friends thought we were racing across the ocean! I can assure anyone who asks that she is a serious cruising vessel for someone looking to go wherever
they want to.