Ranger Tug R21-EC questions

gunterprof · Posted: Thu Apr 17, 2008 6:21 pm Post subject: Ranger Tug R21-EC questions

After years owning sailboats I am ready to purchase my first powerboat the Ranger Tug R21-EC. My wife and I both find this to be an ideal boat. Two questions if I may. She is concerned about privicy with the head. We have come up with a curtian arangement idea. Any input on this would be appreciated. Also she has trouble with warm weather. As we will be using the boat in the California Delta I was considering the factory airconditioning unit that is 12V and thus could be used underway. Any suggestion from you experienced owners would cetainly be appreciated.

Thank you,

Dan

denny48 · Posted: Fri Apr 18, 2008 10:03 am Post subject: New boat suggestions

Dan,
First my congratulations on your decision to purchase, what we consider to be one of the best buys on water. I'm sure you will get many hours of pleasure and solitude from your Tug.
Regarding the head question, after reading many posts and not being too keen or talented working with plumbing, we opted for a porta-potti. We use the cabin curtains for privacy if used inside, and a shower curtain, hung from the support ribs for the canvass when outdoors. Works great for us.

Regarding your a/c question, we purchased ours with an a/c, as we live in AZ and need to cool the cabin for tolerable cruising during the summer. Works pretty good during the day and the evenings usually cool down enough so we don't need to run it at night. There are pics posted in our file.

Hope this helps and get ready to enjoy some great times on the water!

Ron Cowan · Posted: Fri Apr 18, 2008 10:38 am Post subject:

Dan, Congratulations on the new tug. You are in for many hours of enjoyment and at a very economical pace. We also elected the porti potti on our R-21 (prior to the EC. I am in the process of installing a curtain in the cockpit for privacy. In fact I have started other additions under the hardtop that I added. (pic. in album). For a/c I plan to use a window unit with a honda 2000 generator.(part of additions mentioned).
Good luck with your tug and let us see some pictures. It is now time to hit the St. Johns river today since the temp. is to be in the 80's.

Ron

matt_unique · Posted: Fri Apr 18, 2008 10:53 am Post subject: Tug

Totally unrelated to your post but I really like the looks of the tugs. If I had the time and money I would love to have several boats! I have not looked at them closely but they look well made in passing.

Bob Austin self installed an AC unit on his Tomcat and he can probably give you some advice.

thataway · Posted: Fri Apr 18, 2008 12:40 pm Post subject:

Considering the size of the cabin in the Range 21, the profile and the availability of the 12 volt 5,000 BTU unit, that would be the way to go.

The advantage of the roof top RV airconditioner is that it can be run when the boat is out of the water, and makes sense when the boat is trailered--also the small window units work well for this purpose in small boats.

I have run 5,000 bTU 120 volt AC units on inverter with golf cart battery, but the power to recharge the batteries is considerable, and the duration of available airconditioning is limited.

The 12 volt unit sounds like a very good solution.

gunterprof · Posted: Mon Apr 21, 2008 6:10 pm Post subject:

Thank you all for your suggestions and photographs. Your input is appreciated. Will be ordering the tug soon with air conditioning.

drjohn71a · Posted: Mon Apr 21, 2008 8:08 pm Post subject:

I am kind of amazed that the small engine in the EC21 has an alternator large enough to handle a 12V A/C unit. Wouldn't you need a huge battery bank to run a 12V A/C?

Wondering,

John

thataway · Posted: Mon Apr 21, 2008 10:00 pm Post subject:

The DC Breeze 5000 BTU 12 Volt air conditioning unit uses 48 amps. This will drain a 100 amp hour battery very quickly (one hour)--but if you have 4 golf carts, this would this wouldbe 440 amp hours--and the ability to run the air conditioning 5 hours continously. If the boat was insullated reasonably well, you could figure a 50% duty cycle (or a voltage cut off, which would preserve the battery) and you could have a comforatable night sleep.

No problem with a 100 to 120 amp alternator keeping up with the 50 amp demand of this air conditioner. The reason that a 50 amp alternator would not be adequate, is that it would not have adequate cooling capacity--the larger alternators do.

You will only use a relitatively small amount of the capacity of the 30 hp engines on the R 21 to achieve hull speed--plenty of power to run the alternator. Max torque is about 2500 RPM on that engine as I recollect.

I ran a 5000 BTU air conditioner on an Inverter (less effecient than the 12 volt unit)--and could get 4 hours on four golf carts. The problem is having enough alternator to charge up the batteries the next day--again where the large alternators come in handy...

drjohn71a · Posted: Tue Apr 22, 2008 9:10 am Post subject:

thanks, Dr. Bob, for putting that into perspective.

As an added note, I once had a houseboat with a large alternator to run the refrigeration unit. When the refrigeration was on, esp. startup, it would just peel the rubber off the alternator belt! You could see bits of rubber flying off the wheel!

So, we stopped using the 12V option on refrigeration...

John

thataway · Posted: Tue Apr 22, 2008 9:11 pm Post subject:

John makes an excellent point (as usual)--that is that large alternators should really have either dual matched belts or a toothed belt. Many cruising boats which do not have AC generators use commercial grade alternators such as Leece Neville or Electrodyne. Steve Dashew uses basically an all DC generation system, with two 4000 watt (24 volts) alternators on each engine, along with large groups of traction batteries to run all of the AC systems.

I would guess that the houseboat refigeration was a amonia heat absorbtion type--and that it is much more effecient on either propane or 110 V, since the electrical power just runs a heater and not a compressor.