Man O War Cay
Boats at Anchor Off the Island
After spending a few days at Elbow Cay, Good Karma made the short sail to Man O War Cay and anchored just outside the harbor. Elbow Cay was quite nice. Very tourist oriented, not overcrowded, and quite friendly. Met some other cruiser friends from Vero and had dinner with them, our team taking second place at trivia night in the bar. Made friends with Craig and Carol, sailing on Whisper, a 47-foot Passport brand like ours. We toured their boat and received a lot of good advice about Passport boats and sailing in general. Went for an excellent run on Elbow Cay – no sidewalks but almost no cars either. Finally got Shelly into the ocean on one hot afternoon, it was wavy but she stayed in for at least 20 minutes just swimming with me. Unfortunately there was a lot of talk about sharks later that day which put Shelly on the reluctant side of jumping into the water again.
The trip here to Man O War Cay was a last minute change of plans to attempt to get our solar panels mounted and running, there is a canvass worker recommended here. It’s quite difficult to get our batteries fully charged using the generator and the solar panels would help immensely. This is the problem: Our generator can output 100 amps, which is fantastic and in theory would charge even fully drained batteries in only two and a half hours. Unfortunately, marine batteries don’t work that way. They will initially accept the full 100 amps, but as they get charged, they accept less and less until you are only putting a relative trickle of current into them for hours and hours. It’s a real waste of diesel and wear-and-tear to only charge at ten percent of the capacity of the generator.
The solar panels would help immensely there. They will put out about 20 amps in sunlight and fill the batteries for the last few hours they need to become fully charged. Also, they’ll help offset usage during the day: The refrigerator is by far the largest power consumer, taking about 30 amps for 15-20 minutes every few hours or so. We would use very little power without that fridge. Oh well, the price you pay for cold beer, a necessity.
This is Super Bowl Sunday. Last year I was in New Zealand at a sports bar in Rotorua, one of five people watching the Broncos win. Today I’m on our boat in the Bahamas. One hell of a year!
The Sun Sinks Down Over the Sea of Abaco
Posted in Sailing by Mark with comments disabled.