Rosborough rf-246 "Blue Heron"

After a long summer with the boat in storage, I've now been aboard Blue Heron for about a month at the Vero Beach City Marina, the month of December 2014. It's been a noteworthy month in that the temperatures have been cold for Florida -- in the 50's during the day and dropping down to near freezing at night. I've become accustomed to the cold. I really only notice it when the sun sets and the boat cabin starts to cool, and also when I get out of the toasty warm sleeping bag in the morning. I should mention, I'm living off the grid with no shore power, just the solar system. Shore power is required to run the 1000-watt electric heater, so I have no heat on board. Like I said, I don't notice the cold. I wear a fleece jacket and blue jeans during the day and a Baseball hat with the words, "Blue Heron" printed across the front. I sort of went overboard and purchased 25 of these ball caps for Christmas presents. Now I have 15 left over, a lifetime suppl...

Since I was in Detroit doing some Bengali language videos for www.biblepop.com , I figured I'd do some scouting for possible future boating locations. I reserved a motel in Saginaw, Michigan, an hour-and-a-half drive north of Detroit. First location -- Bay City, a medium-sized town on Saginaw Bay which opens to Lake Huron. There were several nice marinas, but I didn't like the Saginaw River which was kind of narrow and industrialized. I had my first look at Lake Huron. The water was clear and flat calm. My first impression was Lake Huron is HUGH! Three Chesapeake Bays would easily fit in Lake Huron. Next I drove north to Mackinaw City and boarded a ferry to Mackinac Island. It was a 45-minute ferry ride each way. The lake was kicking up a 3 - 4 foot chop with a 20-knot breeze. Finally, I circled to the west along Michigan's western shore and the Lake Michigan coast. This is a very popular cruising area. Petoskey and Charlevoix are upscale coastal towns and have bea...

Solar panel mounted on roof above cockpit. While the boat is in storage for hurricane season, I figured it would be a good time to install a solar system. I drove down to Ft. Lauderdale (from Vero Beach) to eMarine Systems. There I purchased a Canadian Solar 255-watt panel, and a Blue Sky Solar Boost 3000i MPPT charge controller along with the 10-gauge cable and all the fittings. With this configuration I am expecting to have enough power to stay at anchor indefinitely and to run the refrigerator. I'll report how it does later in late November when I relaunch for the winter boating season. SS heavy duty 1" x 1" cable clamps hold the panel to the rail. I was able to locate some heavy duty stainless steel cable clamps to attach the panel to the roof handrails. It took three guys to hoist the panel up to the roof. It only weighs 45-lbs, but it is large and awkward to handle. I drilled four holes in the panel frame where the cable clamps attach to the handrail and b...

Fuel Chart (click to enlarge) The shakedown cruise was really in two parts. Part one was when Brian, my Canadian boat-loving friend, and I headed south from the Vero Beach City Marina with the purpose of developing a fuel consumption chart. The fuel chart to the left was the end product of our efforts. We ran the boat at various RPM's and noted the fuel flow rate and GPS speed for that RPM. The chart makes it clear that at a decent cruising speed (13 to 16 knots) with both Suzuki 115 hp outboard engines running, we could expect about 2 nautical miles per gallon. Fuel consumption is a bit more at 20 knots, the speed that feels the most comfortable in calm water. Top speed was about 25 knots with about 1.5 nautical miles per gallon fuel burn. Twin Suzuki 115 hp engines We also needed a "fuel remaining in tank" graph as the fuel gauge reads in percentage full, not gallons in tank. We accomplished this by filling the gas tank in 10-gallon increments and noting the...

Me and the rf-246 back at Vero Beach, FL The process of buying the Rosborough was painless enough. It started with a drive across the state of Florida during February, 2014, from Vero Beach (where I was living aboard a Ranger Tug 21ec) to St. Petersburg, Florida, to look at a used Ranger Tug 25 that had just come on the market. The price was right, but seeing the boat made me realize the Ranger Tug 25 wasn't the boat for me. Ranger Tug makes a great boat, but I came away thinking, "This boat is dark inside and lacking in living space. It feels like a cave inside, like being aboard a sailboat again." I was looking for something bright and airy inside. The broker had said that if the Ranger Tug purchase didn't work out, he had a nice Rosborough rf-246 that might be perfect for me. That started me thinking. I had looked closely at the rf-246 about 10 years ago and liked them, but they were beyond my price range then. Now, 10 years later, the 2008 model was just abou...