Soggy Paws is a St. Francis 44 catamaran built in South Africa.
She was started in 2002 and finally launched in 2004.
Hull# ZA-XGF44038K203 US Doc # 1266612
Hailing Port: Melbourne FL.
We purchased Soggy Paws (ex Bluemoon) in June
2015 from a family who had purchased her in South Africa and cruised
to Southeast Asia. Bluemoon was in good condition and
well-equipped for extended cruising, but we still felt we needed to
do a few things.
For those of you that like to make improvements to your excellent St Francis 44,
below find a few ideas from our work over the past 3 years:
Cockpit Upgrades
When we bought Soggy Paws, the
cockpit had a flat sunbrella top over a nice stainless steel frame.
The problem was, when it rained, water would pool directly over the
helm seat, and drip profusely right on the helmsperson's head.
There was only a narrow wooden walkway to get to the aft end of the
boom. And there was no water catchment system built in. So we
had a hard fiberglass top made.
We also replaced the flimsy helm-seat-on-a-pedestal
with a custom-made helm seat.
We added two smaller winches behind the primary
winches to be able to use a winch to reef the jib.
Details on these upgrades are found on the
Cockpit page.
Hull Extensions
The aft ends of the original hulls ended in a relatively small platform step that was constantly wet and grew green slippery slime. In order to prevent this we decided to raise the aft sections to the second step up and then extend them back to meet the underbody. This extended the hulls about 18" and raised the now 24"x48" aft platforms about 8" off the water.
The extensions are made of strongly fiberglass reinforced 1" honeycomb and PVC foam. In order to get a thru bolted folding SS ladder mounted and provide access to the interiors we installed 10" round hatches in each platform to allow access to the nuts inside. Benefits include a dry large swim platform with ladder access from the water, increased buoyancy aft which helps support the davit hung dinghy, and better access from a dinghy to the boat.
Aft
Step Extension Photos
Watermaker
For many reasons, including the relatively small fresh water tankage on the boat, we finished off the mechanically driven 40 gph watermaker that the original owner had mostly completed.
Refrigeration
We have upgraded both the refrigerator and freezer on the St.
Francis 44.
The original 2.5 cubic ft RV refrigerator installed in the front of the galley
was way too small for the style of cruising we do. So we
replaced it with a custom made 8 cu ft front-opening refigerator
with good insulation.
The factory-installed Minus 40 freezer is top loading and with about 4 cubic ft
of interior volume. It is a nice unit, but we felt the BD35
air-cooled compressor was a little small. So we replaced the
BD35 with the bigger BD50 with a Frigoboat keel cooler.
Check out our Refrigeration page
for more details on these upgrades.
Engines and Saildrives
We have done a number of major maintenance items and
upgrades with the engines and saildrives, including:
-
Saildrive oil header tanks
-
Replacing saildrive seals
-
Protecting the aluminum saildrives from the
copper bottom paint
-
Adding a Jackmaster Oil Filter system.
-
Replacing the 2-bladed fixed propeller with a
3-bladed Kiwi Prop
See everything we have done to maintain and upgrade
our saildrives on the Engines and Saildrives
page.
Electrical System
We replaced the original solar panels and solar controllers with
4 new 200-watt panels and an 60-amp MPPT solar controller.
We also upgraded the alternator charging system so they were a
matched pair of alternators and each is equipped with a smart
alternator regulator.
During our COVID time, we replaced the still-good but ageing
Sonneschein gel batteries with LifePO4 cells.
See the details of the electrical system upgrades on our
Electrical Systems page.
Interior
We have made a number of upgrades to the interior
- Added fans to every space
- Upgraded all interior lighting to bright LED's
- Added shelving in a number of places
See the details on our Interior page.
From our previous boat,
subjects that apply to the current boat:
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