4 March 2013 – Solar Panels, Food, Heating & a new Cover

With only a week to go before we head out on our sailing adventure I am learning incredible amounts of information and a flurry of activity is happening at our boat. Today we had an Liam, our electrician from LTD Marine Electricians help do some testing and prepare our boat for upgraded solar panels. By the time we are done we will upgrade our 4 Gel 4D batteries for new ones with 740 Amp Hours and bump up our panels by 3 from 325 Watts to 680 watts of charging capacity. Until now most of these numbers have been fairly foreign to me but they are starting to make a little bit of sense… at least I am figuring out the difference between our 12V and 110V systems. With a 5 day delivery however for the new solar panels, it is looking  like we may have to delay our departure by a day or two so we can finish installing the panels.

We also had our long lost repair person from Swedish Marine return to repair our climate control system. He came at the end of January but left after not being able to locate the electrical schematics of our boat and asked that I request them from the manufacturer. He was supposed to be back at the beginning of February. I think he forgot about us and so I called him up the other day to let him know that he left his notebook here. Within two days he was here and it only took him an hour to finally get us heat in the main salon area of our boat… finally we can warm up after freezing as we tried to keep up with 4 small space heaters.

We also had a company come to take away our canvas top. They will re-sew parts of the bimini (soft top) so that the rain and water will pour off the front and back instead of pool on the top and dump on the sides to soak my helm seat. With a slight modification of the location of the crossbar, we should be able to not only keep the water off the top, but also set up a freshwater collection system with the use of some PVC fittings I picked up at Home Depot. They will add some 1 inch gromets to the corners along with some pockets for the PVC fittings I found. If we do it right, we may be able to have enough fresh water to avoid turning on the water maker (desalinator) during our big crossing.

The kids were also busy trying to get things smaller projects done. Dailin started with commencing the official name change of our boat. Charleete II is now officially Far & Away! Thanks to our friends the Walsh’s we received the vinyl lettering and proper instructions to have Dailin remove the old name and apply the new one to the stern and two sides of the boat. There is even a tag line for www.FamilyAdventuring.com

Kirsten was gone for most of the day running errands. We are getting a little worried at the thought of no longer having a van to go run errands. It has been so convenient to have our van here but we can’t bring it with us. She loaded up the boat with a few wheelbarrow loads full of groceries and other supplies. I just hope that the boat can handle all of the weight we are piling into her.

Among these projects, I was desperately juggling a dozen phone calls for work and other projects for later in the week. I am trying to wrap up everything before we leave. On my yet-to-do list for this week I need to get some scuba gear, fix our amateur radio equipment (so people can hear me and so I can send emails through the radio) along with a bazillion other small and large things. Lets just hope we get the most critical things wrapped up before the week is up and we all survive doing it.