Power on an S/V

Lightkeepers Marina
Little River, SC

Well, here it is almost a year later and we are still working on improvements to Sea Turtle. The dinghy davits are installed and so is the SSB radio, though I have yet to get full use of it. We are now preparing for a trip to Florida and eventually to the Bahamas. If all goes well we plan to leave between Christmas and the New Year.

To that end we are still adding conviences. Electricity is something we all take for granted. Just plug a cord into the wall and there you are. Not so on a sailboat. When not attached to the shore, the boat depends on 12 volt batteries similar to the one in your car. Keeping enough energy in the batteries to power things on the boat (think autopilot, lights, chargers for electronics, refrigerator and freezer, etc.) requires generating a lot of power. This is not a problem while the motor is running but when under sail or at anchor you are taking power out and not putting power in. To deal with this problem we are having a rack built that will mount on the swim platform to hold solar panels and a wind generator. Between the two we hope to keep the batteries charged.

To complicate the power situation we want to be able to use some things that operate on standard 120 volt power like in the house. Lynda wants to be able to use a hair drier, we would like to use a toaster, how about a blender and so forth. To use there things when we only have a 12 volt system we are going to install an inverter. It will change the 12 volt power to 120 volts. The problem with an inverter is that it eats energy making a particularly heavy draw on batteries. Think wind generator and solar panels.

So much for now. Stay tuned for the next thrilling episode of Sea Turtle.