aboard a super yacht

Every year at the end of the European summer

many of the big boats make the migration

across the Atlantic to the Caribbean

for the northern hemisphere winter

But the technical side of these big boats

for me is really interesting

So I'd like to share a peek into my daily routine

as chief engineer aboard one of these big boats

on a crossing from Gibraltar

to St Martin in the Caribbean

The crossing took 16 days.

We departed Gibraltar at sunrise

after refuelling the night before

Anyway, lets grab a coffee

and I'll take you down the engine room for a look around

These are our 2 main engines

2x V12 Caterpillars

their rated at 1500 kW each

that's about 2000 Hp

There's 2 of everything on many of the systems on here

so there's 2 pumps on all of your critical systems

so you can switch over if one fails

Small workshop

Lets step into the control room.

It's a bit quieter in here

and cooler too!

Control room

while they drive the boat from upstairs

on the bridge

the nerve centre of the boat is down here

in the control room, in the engine room.

Here's a mimic panel view

of the tankage on the boat.

fuel and water tanks

We left Gibraltar with 160,000 litres of fuel

and we only burned 70,000 litres for the voyage,

travelling at slow speed.

We could carry about 50,000 litres of water.

That's our air conditioning plant.

We got 2 out of 3 compressors running.

They chill water that gets pumped around the boat

to air handlers that cools the interior.

Here's our electrical load.

We've got 2 out of 3 generators on the board.

Producing 120 kW each

The main engines are controlled from the bridge

but we've got backup control in the engine room too.

Something from the engineers library ;)

Even though we've got digital data

for many of the systems that are running

We still keep a manual log, every 4 hours

with temperatures, pressures.

Here's one of the generators

a 6 cylinder Caterpillar

in a sound enclosure.

These are our water makers.

With both of them running

we can make 20 litres of fresh water

out of sea water, every minute.

That's nearly 30 tonnes a day of fresh water

which is pretty cool!

I used to log our position on my iPhone

I didn't trust them upstairs ;)

In the fo'c'sle

at sea.

Just doing a bit of repair work here

changing a, gauge

There's always something to do.

This is only a tiny portion of the food we had onboard

we had mountains of food.

There was crew only onboard for the trip.

There were no guests for this voyage.

Fire and safety drills are part of the routine of living onboard

and being at sea was no exception.

This was our audio visual server rack

including the controls for the Vsat

for our satellite internet connection

and the sat TV's

these were logged on a routine bases as well

We were lucky with the weather on this trip

the wind increased steadily

throughout the voyage

but it was always a following sea

I even had time to grow a beard :)

After 16 beautiful days at sea

Land ahoy!

I love the routine you get into

and the peace and tranquility

out on the ocean on a trip like this

It was almost a shame for it to end.

So, is it the same time every single day?

Yep

I hope you enjoyed this trip across the Atlantic with me.

Thanks for watching...