Preparations Part 1

We are already experiencing sleepless nights thinking and worrying about all that must be done before we can take off. Basically they break down into 3 categories: the boat; the house; and our personal and business affairs. The boat is mostly ready to go but I will be adding some equipment. There are three things that are problematic when doing what we're doing (other than the obvious things like weather, navigation, etc)---they are: water, electricity and comfort factors. We have already decided that we will probably be "marina hoppers", ie. traveling from marina to marina to spend our non-sailing hours and days. We certainly plan on spending quite a bit of time at anchor , hopefully in beautiful, isolated, quiet, private bays and inlets, but we do like our comforts and do not mind spending the money to stay tucked into a nice, secure berth from time to time. The difference is --shorepower---When we're in a marina we are plugged into 120V electric power. This runs our air conditioning and keeps our batteries charged so we can run our refrigeration, lights, radio, TV--all the creature comforts, without having to worry about running out of juice. Also--nice restrooms, ice available, plenty of water. At anchor, these things are not available and we have to provide our own . This is not so easy. Remember, we will be in salt water---can't drink it. We could add a water maker but they are very expensive and use a lot of electric power--so we have opted to go without it (for now) Our boat carries about 80 gallons of fresh water and we carry lots of bottled water for drinking. We have learned that we can get by for about 4 days on what we carry and since we plan to visit marinas frequently--we'll just replenish every 3 or 4 days.(This could become a bit more difficult in the Bahamas--cross that bridge later). For electric--my battery bank will get us through about 3 full days without having to recharge---that's not enough. I can recharge by running the diesel engine for a couple of hours a day but that is annoyingly noisy and very fuel inefficient. Thus, I have decided to add a small Honda portable generator. They are amazingly quiet and efficient and will even be capable of running the air conditioning on those sticky nights. The only problem is that we'll have to carry a couple of jerry cans of gasoline to run it--no biggy, I'll already have spare diesel fuel cans scattered about on deck--what's a little more clutter? This little generator will run our 115 volt charger which can recharge our batteries in far less time than running the big diesel. So, we've addressed the water, electricity and comfort issues. We may add an alternative power generation (wind generator or solar panels, or both)system later after we see how this system works out.
I have a few other things to get ready on the boat--auto pilot needs a repair and anchor windless needs servicing but essentially the boat is ready to go. Next post I'll talk about our plans for the house.