Ship’s Log
No Boundaries
June 1, 2009
We almost have Baltimore washed off our boat. It isn’t easy. Baltimore has been a wonderful home for almost eight years, but it has its drawbacks. For as long as we lived there, we battled with the black guck that falls out of the sky. Most people blame the unsightly muck on Domino Sugar. No matter where it comes from, it leaves a mess on the surface of a boat that is very hard to remove. Last year I learned that magic erasers do the trick, but it takes a couple of dozen of them to finish the job. We bought them through eBay, a hundred at a time, because the volume required would otherwise break the bank even at Wal-mart prices.
We enjoyed worship on the aft deck yesterday. When we are anchored out like this, we don’t have any easy way to get to church. Instead, we improvise an altar on the aft deck and take turns speaking and reading and praying. For now, we don’t have our sound system like we want it, but later we will be able to play our CD of Dr. Davis on the organ for a prelude while we get ready for “church.”
We are learning to live life on 30 amps. That is a major concern when cruising. Many items run on DC, which uses battery power. However, anything that runs on AC requires the inverter, and the inverter must use a little power for itself when converting DC to AC. Therefore, we are extremely attentive to the use of AC. It takes a bit of strategizing to reduce the impact of using AC, and it takes more to solve some interesting problems.
For starters, our water heater and our coffeemaker require AC. We have finally learned that it isn’t a good idea to start both of them the minute the generator goes on. The inverter overheats when it is hit with that demand from both at once. So, we start the generator, start the coffee (we do have our priorities!) and after a bit, we start the water heater.
We also run to our computers and work like little turks while the generator is on. Larry’s computer has a better battery than mine, but we both benefit by using generator time as computer work time. For me, running Dreamweaver or Photoshop is so resource-intensive that I can run down my battery in an hour or less that way, so web work is definitely generator time. My little Dell mini has a better battery than my big laptop, but it is not the right machine for Dreamweaver or Photoshop. I use it for blogging and other writing tasks in Word. I can move files back and forth between the two machines using my flash drive, so it, too, is part of my 30-amp strategy.
There are other cruising challenges, and we will pass on the strategies as we learn them. If anybody reads this blog and has a good idea we can learn from, please shout it out. We are always ready to learn a new trick.