Daydreamer is ready, Our lab-boat, a 1985 Finot Comet 460, is going to touch the water and start a long season of tests. In our test centre we set up at the Alpha Shipyard in Marina di Varazze, Italy, all the equipment, accessories and products we’re going to test have just arrived. From anti-fouling paint to gangway, from electronic equipment to generator: everything will be deeply inspected.
The season includes two parts:Â a winter one, already inaugurated with the boat haulage, the first interventions on the hull, equipment installation and the first sea trials; and a summer one, when Daydream will explore new ports and anchorages and will be used to test new instruments.
Through these tests, we’ll tell you about the operation, performances, features, quality and eventual limits of a wide range of equipment.
Furthermore, our cruises will also give us the chance of making some tutorials in order to explain how specific installation or maintenance interventions should be done on board.
We experienced our first test some days ago. After the haulage and the hull cleaning phase, a Boero technician started the preparation and coating interventions of the anti-fouling paint produced by the same company of Genoa.
The test will continue with two further steps. In about three months from now, when waters will start to be warmer and more “aggressive”, we’re sailing off to check and photograph the product efficiency. Then, at the end of summer, we’ll check the results of anti-fouling used on the different areas of the hull. 
We wont’ have to wait long to write about anti-fouling. The above-mentioned operation has already offered us the chance of producing our first tutorial and writing an article about the seven checks to do before anti-fouling. In the next days, we’re also writing an article about how to prepare the boat, how to coat the paint and which precautions to adopt.
With our boat still in the pool, we’ll let you discover other two important steps. The first concerns the safety of both our boat and crew: the replacement of valves and sea cocks. With the collaboration of Guidi, one among the leading companies of the sector where it has being operating for 49 years, we’ll show you what means to replace a sea cock before testing it: holding, use, maintenance and wear.
The second operation concerns aesthetics and the “dermatological” health of our boat. We’ll focus on the skin of our Daydreamer and will analyze a wrapping intervention on her deckhouse by Lucadesign in order to understand the necessary steps, the possible results and the importance of having brighter internal and external surfaces.
As regards electronics, tests will be really numerous. Raymarine, a society which collaborates with us and our test centre during our tests, sent us a rich series of instruments to test.
Follow us in the next weeks and we’ll take you in a magic world made of signals and frequencies in order to discover both the operation and performances of Raymarine radars, wind stations, digital and analog multifunction displays.
Furthermore, always in the next weeks, we’ll tell you the tests (noise, consumption, performances) of another important instrument: the Coelmo generator. But before that, we’ll also unveil something about the inventiveness and technical skill of Alpha Shipyard.
The installation of a generator on a 1985 boat, as glorious and totally restored (two years ago) she is, is a great challenge.
We’ll show you which solutions we adopted to solve our problems in terms of placement, sound and thermal insulation, encumbrance. We’re sure our pictures will be able to astonish you.
In summer, it will be time to see the tactile differences, the resilience and duration of a very innovative product: a Carbonautica rudder wheel. We replaced the old worn wheel covered with leather, damaged after years of sun exposure, wind and water, with a brand-new one, lighter and made of innovative materials we’ll test in terms of quality, resistance and appearance.
Always Carbonautica sent us a gangway we’ll test in order to find out whether it can really change our life in the port and while sailing compared with traditional ones. In theory, its lightness and easy handling, together with its steerable wheels and easy installation, should offer a great advantage. We’ll test it in the quays of the ports we’ll get next spring or summer and during our transfers.
Our plans are ambitious; consequently, we’ve extended our cruise weeks in order to cover both the central months of next summer, that is July and August.
Our Daydreamer is sailing off from Marina di Varazze and setting course to Corsica, Sardinia and… then we’ll see. What is certain is that anchorages will be the theatre where to test other two essential components for our summer cruise: a tender and an outboard. We’ll report precise details (speed, consumption, capacity..) and our impressions using a Selva tender and a Torqeedo 1300 outboard.
Furthermore, we’ll test the real efficiency of Easy Harbor, the App which allows to exchange, book, rent and pay a berth in just few simple steps on our smartphone or tablet.
- The Selva Marine tender tested last year
What is taking shape is an intense season which we’re 
sure will replicate the last one, when, in just 4 months, our tests recorded 1 million views and thousands of people commented our tests and sailing stories.
