Life of a Seakeeper

I'm not super knowledgable about seakeeper maintenance, but have run a lot of seakeepers. There's a zinc or two that seems to be every 100-200 hours of operation. But the BIG service is usually at 2,000 hours and that requires changing the bearings and is very costly.

There is a vacuum schedule on the sphere also.
We used USA Stabilizer for our SeaKeeper customers.
Tap on them for your questions and east coast service when needed.

https://www.usastabilizers.com/contact

Seakeeper provides recommended maintenance schedules. As to the useful life of a Seakeeper, I don't think we know yet. We haven't reached the age or hours at which discarding them or a total rebuild are the best options.

Does anyone know what vacuum level they achieve ? If it was a deep vacuum of only a few microns you should not hear it spinning. On second thought the sound may come through the bearings, shafts and the mounting hardware.

Another thought is why aren't sea-keepers and generators which are completely cased in most instances fitted with ANR (active noise reduction).
That technology is available not only for what I just mentioned but the entire engine room could have a ANR system, not just headsets.

You can make anything silent for a cost, just a function of $$$. Where do you draw the line?
I would spend the money on a Side-Power Fin Stabilizer system as a redundant system to take the load off the SeeKeepers , extend both there lives, not worry about downtime, and widen the spectrum of effective stabilization.

I would go with the sidepower side fin stabilizers over seakeeper in most cases. I'm very impressed with them. The other issue you're not mentioning is weight. Sound deadening and 2 different stabilizers come in at a cost, IE weight.

Does anyone have a seakeeper maintenance schedule they can post here?

https://www.seakeeper.com/customer-support/maintenance/

What's the cost and maintenance difference btwn the sidepower and seakeeper?

I couldn't tell you. A seakeeper 9 costs around $100k to install into a MY that has the stringers/place already set up for a seakeeper. Not sure on anything else.

Hello we are the Elite Seakeeper dealer & service for the South France - with regards to what you mentioned above - we agree for the replacements of the anodes - however for the major service - we recommend to change the "hydraulic accumulators" every 1000h then the "bushing" every 2000h - for roughly at a cost of 1k to 1,5k $ for a major service!

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Hello Ghost riderIII

That's not including labour and parts right? If so, that's a bit on the stiff side.
One thousand hours for most owners is 5 - 7 yrs. For us it was last weekend (2019-2020).
That's why I was asking for a comparison on the units.

Someone on another site just told me they are running two units on a Nordhavn 62. I think that's overkill.

Let's see, 2 x SeaKeepers, 1 x Active Fin Stabilizers with Zero Speed capability, 1 pair of Flopper Stoppers for at anchor, somethings I begin to think that we don't like being on the water all that much. Lots of mechanical system fixes for Roll, or maybe we could just design it with less?

A lot of yachts are now putting 2 instead of one, because the smaller units are easier to find a home for in the boat and mounted on outbound sides near the hull side seems to have a greater effect than one large one in the center. Plus there is a HUGE physical size difference going from a seakeeper 9 to the next larger size. If you look at the height of the Superstructure, it most likely NEEDS them.

What I've read on Trawler Forum is they mounted them under the lazerette!

They work there. Hatteras on the 60' MY used to use one in the forward engine room. They switched to 2 of them in the lazzarette on opposite sides, against the hull side, they work very very well there.