It was some 25 years ago when I first installed mechanical refrigeration aboard one of my boats. The install was quite simple.  I drilled some holes for wires and cooling lines, maneuvered the cold plate into the cooler, hooked up the wires electrical leads and turned it on.  Done!  Not…

It turned out that it wasn’t all that easy after all.  What about an energy audit?  Did I balance the consumption against my power reserves?  How would I put the power I used back into the battery?  No, no and NO!

That simple install turned out to be just the beginning of a tortured process that would last years and cost more than a few boat dollars.  And those cold beers, well they were a long time coming. If you also plan to make some upgrades, you should look for a boat storage unit where your boat will be protected from certain elements that could cause some damage. 

So, here I am decades later and I finally feel like I have things fairly well figured out.  When I think back to that initial install and where we are now, I am struck by how much things have changed, the sophistication of the equipment and how much greater our energy needs are now when compared to years ago.

Back in the “olden days” the need for power was primarily focused on a few lights and perhaps mechanical refrigeration, if we even had that, with little else.  Nowadays, it is not uncommon to have a whole fleet of devices, computers, cell phones, rechargeable lights, autopilot, navigation instruments, microwave, TV, watermaker and much more, all needing greater and greater amounts of power, loading up our little “grid”.

Over the summer I upgraded the house batteries to lithium, replaced four of the 5 solar panels and added a wind generator.   Here’s what the “array” looks like.  A lot of capacity in a small space. As recently as last year, on passage, I had to run the engine to charge the batteries at least once a day.  As I don’t have a house generator, unusual for a 47′ boat, running the main engine, with the marine engine mounts taking care of vibrations, heats up the main cabin terribly as we made our way south.  Pandora is a wet boat so we have to keep everything sealed up to avoid an errant wave finding it’s way below making things a lot steamier down below. 

While we don’t have a generator, beyond my little gas Honda 2000, I should mention that the main engine has a power takeoff to a large alternator that can easily put out 200 amps at 12v for extended periods.  That, along with our house inverter, are powerful enough to run our AC while motoring, which we did for nearly three days of near calms on the trip this fall as even an hour of engine runtime each day adds a lot of heat to the main cabin. 

Prior to our recent upgrades, we had an AGM bank of just over 1,000AH but for practical purposes I wasn’t able to use more than about 25% of that capacity before recharging.  While my new lithium bank totals, slightly less, about 840 AH, I can easily use 90% or about 750AH before recharging.  That’s a tripling of  usable capacity.

On passage, with both plotters, many instruments and the autopilot going, we use, on average, about 8 amps which can deplete the batteries pretty fast in the overnight hours.   Happily, the new wind generator, in about 20kts apparent, now puts out enough energy to offset the entire suite of electronics.   Note that this is a 12v power curve so you’ll need to divide the amps by 2 to get the correct output at 24v.  In this case, the curve in 20kts of wind matches the house load for Pandora when we are underway, a huge gain when on passage. As the generator output matches exactly what the power curve of the unit is rated at, suggests that the new batteries will take power as fast as you can give them with virtually no resistance. I chose the Marine Kinetix unit as a few of my friends have one installed on their boat and are happy with how well it performs and how quiet it is. I also found Jeff in tech support particularly helpful as the install on Pandora was a a bit more complex being a 24v boat.

Having had a difficult experience with a wind generator years ago due to how loud it was, I have been thrilled with the fact that the unit is basically silent.  You can only hear a very slight hum when at anchor and you have to listen closely to even hear anything at all.   Under way, in any wind up to about 30kts when it begins to power down, the only way to tell it’s working is to look at the spinning blades and the amps that are showing on the controller.

In addition to the electronics and other equipment load that is covered by the wind generator, the largest load aboard Pandora is refrigeration and that was easily handled by the new solar panels.  I was surprised to learn that solar panels loose efficiency each year and in my case, the four older 80w panels were probably down to about 40 watts each so replacing them has made a huge difference.

The amazing thing was that on passage, once we hit the trade winds, the boat batteries were fully charged each day and never went below 84% of full at any point during the last 600 miles on our way to Antigua.  Amazing and way beyond what I had expected from the upgraded system.  No more daily running of the engine unless there isn’t enough wind.

I had heard that lithium batteries take a charge much faster than traditional batteries but to see this happen in the “real world” was impressive.

That’s pretty amazing and with even a reasonable amount of sunlight the solar puts back the power used by the refrigeration.

After messing with power issues for so long, it’s remarkable to see how much better things are now.  The lithium bank has made more of a difference than I expected as the batteries suck up power at a rate that I have never seen before.  Even if the batteries are nearly full, they continue to suck up all the power available right up to 100%.  That is so different than lead acid where the acceptance rate slows to a trickle the closer the batteries get to 100%.

Charging now takes a few hours to reach capacity verses all day, if at all, for the agm deep cycle battery.  And, having the wind provide enough power to cover the overnight usage on passage is a very big deal.

Sure, our energy needs continue to grow but I now have excess power storage capacity, multiples beyond my old AGM bank and now I can even keep everything fully charged on passage without running the engine, something that was never the case before.

So, with the wind generator spinning happily and those new solar panels sucking up the sun, Pandora is on her own for a few weeks, making ice and keeping that elusive beer cold along with a nice bottle of champagne to celebrate our return on December 3oth.

Fortunately, that rabbit hole isn’t nearly as deep as it used to be.

It was great fun being on the dock with all the Dawgs but yesterday I moved Pandora from English Harbor to Falmouth where she will sit on a mooring until Brenda and I return after the holidays.

It was nice to move over to where the water is clear and the first thing I did after getting her settled was to go for a swim, my first of the season.

Here’s the view I woke up to this morning.  It’s been a week since I arrived in Antigua but in a way, it feels like it’s been much longer. A beautiful way to start the day, complete with a rainbow. When I arrived a week ago Monday, ending a 9.5 day run from Hampton, I was eager to begin the daily events that I organized during the run south.  While I had spoken with all our supporters over the few months leading up to our arrival, the nearly two week delay in departing made it tough to know when we’d have enough boats in Antigua to begin having events.

As the fleet got closer and I had a pretty good feel for when we’d have “critical mass”, whatever that means in “party terms”, I began putting events to dates.

Fortunately, our partners here in Antigua were very willing to support us on short notice and jumped through some pretty big hoops to be ready to greet us with very little warning.

The staff of Nelson’s Dockyard worked hard to accommodate more boats than ever and we filled the place to capacity.  One issue that proved to be challenging was the need to plug in all those American boats that needed 110v as half of the dockyard is wired for European 220v, a problem for many in the fleet.

When we are on anchor there is no need for AC but when you pull up to a dock and the boat isn’t naturally pointing into the wind, it can get hot down below.  Marinus the marina manager and others in the Dockyard worked hard to accommodate the sweaty cruisers, but in some cases it took a few days to accomplish this and get power to all the boats.

Anyway, we’ve had a lot of events, sometimes more than two a day, and everyone had a great time.  Here’s a group photo of many that did the rally.  There were probably 100 more than this but crew generally flies out right away upon arrival. One of the highlight events was a few nights ago in Nelson’s Dockyard, a dinner event attended by more than 100.    The evening was wonderful and was hosted by Ann-Marie Martin, who runs the National Park system and has been a key contact for me over the years.

They went all out including a steel drum band. I loved the traditional dancers, including one on stilts.  Minister of tourism, Max Fernandez, was also there and spoke to the crowd.  Between him and Ann-Marie, they whipped the crowd into quite a frenzy.

Next week is the Charter Boat Show, where all the big yachts show their stuff to charter brokers who come to the island to check out what’s available for their clients.  When you are spending several hundred thousand on a week long charter, sometimes more than a million, you want to know that it will be perfect.

A week ago the marina was empty.  Now it’s filling up fast.   How about this selection?   Pick one.  Not sure Eos is available for charter.  At about 300′ long she’s one of the largest sailing yachts in the world and is owned by Diane Von Furstenburg and Barry Diller.  Nice dink aboard Eos. You get a sense of the scale of these yachts and this isn’t one of the largest.  It takes crew all day to polish them. She is owned by a guy, Patrick Dovigi, a Canadian.  He’s only 43 years old and made his money in waste management.  I’ll bet they handle trash very efficiently aboard.

So, here we are and the big kids are now arriving, day by day and soon there won’t be an open slip to be had.

As much fun as it’s been to be here in Antigua, I’ll admit that it was a bit of a downer that Brenda wasn’t here with me.  As we were so delayed, she had to stick close to home with the holidays looming large.

I am looking forward to heading back home for the holidays tomorrow.  I will put Pandora on a mooring where she will remain until we return around the new year.  With the new battery bank, wind generator and solar array, there won’t be a problem keeping the freezer and fridge nice and cold.

It’s been a whirlwind week and next week I’ll begin planning some events for January and throughout the season.  No rest for the weary cruiser.

It’s been great fun being here and I look forward to a season of cruising when Brenda and I return to Pandora.

 

 

It’s Thanksgiving day, I’m here in Antigua but Brenda’s not…

Pandora is on the dock with dozens of other Salty Dawg Boats.  The weather is a lot different here than back in CT and it’s another beautiful day. Ok, a little closer as Pandora hardly shows up next to that big cat.With all the delays in getting the Salty Dawg Fleet to Antigua, half of the month of November has come and gone.  Holiday plans were upended and many found themselves away from family, well at least those who’s family didn’t fly to Antigua.

I am not sure how many boats are actually here or will be very soon, but perhaps it’s about 60-70.  Hard to say without a laborious review of the tracker page showing the tracks of 100 boats.

Anyway, here I am and Brenda’s not…

As we got closer to Antigua I sent out a barrage of emails to those who I had been working with to cobble together as many events as possible before I was to fly out on December 1st.  Sadly, the day that we tied up on the dock was the day that our events, as originally planned, were to end and I was to fly back home with Brenda for Thanksgiving.  It was weird to know that I had just arrived and my two paid for seats on a flight home were going to leave, unused that very day.

So, of the 18 events that I had put in place months ago had to be re-scheduled but I was only able to fit in 9, one every day until my departure.  More to come, as there will be plenty of our boats still on the island for the holidays.

Last night North Sails put on an open house with a local jazz band.  Andrew, the proprietor, also invited folks from the Antigua Yacht Club and others from the island.  It was a huge success. This evening Angie, over at the Antigua Yacht Club is hosting a Thanksgiving dinner and I expect that it will be packed now that most of the boats are here in Antigua.

There are still events planned for every day until I leave including an arrival dinner at The Admiral’s Inn and a special welcome event here in Nelson’s Dockyard where most of the Salty Dawg boats are tied up.  I have been working with the Commissioner of the National Parks and understand that the Minister of Tourism, Charles Fernandez will be with us as well.  It will be a fun event.

As fun as all this is, I have to say that not having Brenda here with me is a bummer but with the arrival of the fleet pushed back so far and the approaching holidays, she just has too much on her plate with Thanksgiving and Christmas coming up, pun intended, for her to fly down and join me.

However, she is with our son Chris and his partner Melody in NYC enjoying Thanksgiving.  At least I can video call in.  I’m looking forward to that.

So, that’s about all and at least I can say that the Gang is all here, sort of…

I’ll make the best of it for now and look forward to a video call at least.

It is a beautiful day…

It’s Monday morning, the beginning of the 10th day of our voyage.  As the sun came up we were treated to a squall.  Actually, yesterday ended and today began with squalls and I expect that we have not seen the last of them.

The wind is just forward of the beam, close reaching, in the upper teens, pushing us along at 8 kts or so.  When a squall comes by, the wind, within moments, increases to the upper 20s with apparent wind in the low 30s.  With a reef in the main and the jib out, we are pushed along at 9-10 kts for a bit before the wind nearly dies, as fast as it freshened.

As these squalls are coming at us on the beam, they pass by generally in about a half hour with peak winds only lasting for a short time.   I know that facing squalls freaks out most people and I’ll admit that I’d be very worried if my sails and rigging weren’t in top shape.

With all the “squall drama” I would prefer to have the trip to end with more benign conditions but if I have to chose between slogging along motor sailing in light wind or fast sailing with squalls, I’ll take reeling off the miles anytime.

So, it’s looking like we will be arriving in Antigua at about dusk so I am not sure if I will head into English Harbor or Falmouth.  For sure, we will anchor, rinse out the cockpit and enjoy what will likely be a “post sundowner”, that’s a sundowner that happens after sunset. Get it?

And on Tuesday, tomorrow, our first arrival event begins, with events daily through the end of the month when I head home.

This abbreviated event schedule will not be the end of it as there are still plenty of programs in the wings to schedule.

So, with about 75 miles to go I have to say that I am really looking forward to my first “post sundowner” of the season.

No rest for the weary voyager.   ANTIGUA, HERE WE COME!

It’s mid morning on Sunday and we are about 130 miles from our destination, English Harbor Antigua.

It’s hard to believe that we are so close and yet STILL NOT THERE!

Or, perhaps from a more adult perspective, we are more than 90% of the way there.

As we move along on the last leg, we are spending more and more time putting in and shaking out reefs as we encounter squall after squall.  Wind speeds within an hour can vary from 14kts to nearly 30kts in squalls. It’s frustrating to tie in and then shake out reefs so often but it is important to keep sail area balanced with the wind.

In the last 30 minutes we decided to take out the remaining reef only to be hit with wind that piped up within 10 minutes to nearly 30kts and there was no sign of a squall or any dark clouds on the horizon.  Go figure.

Keeping our speed up is important as we’d really love to get into English Harbor in the daylight.  I have never gone in when it is dark, opting for Falmouth, with it’s wide and easy entrance, instead.

At this point it’s hard to say if we will arrive when it’s still light and even less certain if it will be early enough to tie up to the dock on Monday at Nelson’s Dockyard.

One thing for sure is that as soon as we arrive, and I expect that some 25 boats will arrive within 12 hours of each other, we will begin our events.
As of last April, when I left the island, I had nearly two weeks of daily events planned only to have the entire schedule thrown to the wind with our nearly two week delay.  It is ironic that the first event on Tuesday will mark what should have been my flight home for the holidays and the end of the events that I planned so long ago.

It is ironic is that I will be on-island, theoretically early enough to catch my already booked flight on Tuesday.   However between the rescheduled events and getting Pandora cleaned up after ten days at sea, just isn’t reasonable.  I want to be sure that she is ship-shape when Brenda and I return in late December.

Also, the last few days of sailing have given me some insight into how the new wind generator, solar panels and lithium battery bank are working out.

I have to say that it is even better than I had expected.

In the past I have not been able to run my watermaker on passage unless I had the engine on as the load from the instruments and refrigeration was more than the solar panels were able to sustain.

However, the replacement panels are amazing, putting out enough power to fully top the batteries up before noon and the overnight input from the wind generator has a big impact as well.

An unexpected benefit is how easily the lithium batteries accept power.  With my old lead/acid batteries, the closer that they got to being fully charged, the slower the charging process, meaning that as the day progressed less and less energy was put into the batteries.

Not so with lithium as they are able to absorb current as fast as you can feed it to them until they are fully charged.  It is only then that they shut off.  Because of their “all or nothing thirst for power”, the charging efficiency is multiple times better.

In a way, having this setup is sort of like water management when you have a watermaker.  No longer do you have to worry as much about every gallon you use.  And, now knowing that almost no mater what I use from the batteries, the panels and generator will put it back.

I log a number of critical numbers every two hours when we are on passage, wind speed, direction, boat speed etc and now I have been logging batter percentage to full.  In spite of using loads of power for all matter of electronics, refrigeration and even the watermaker, the charge level of the battery bank has never dipped below the mid 90% range.

Granted, it’s been plenty sunny but hey, it’s always sunny in the tropics.  However, I expect that even if it was partially overcast, that we’d still have full batteries sooner rather than later.

It’s making me wonder if we might be able to run our washer on the inverter from Solar?  Something to think about.  No Honda droning away on the deck.  Brenda would like that.

It’s worth noting that in the time it too me to write this post I was interrupted with calls to reef twice.   No rest for the weary delivery crew.

However, with one day to go until our arrival in Antigua and I can almost taste it.  What can I taste you ask?  Not sure but it definitely includes a rum punch.