Young Adventures: Here Comes the Sun!

It may sound a little hippy'ish but I find it awesome that every single bit of power I get comes from the warm sun and the breeze blowing my wind generator and cooling the boat. My kids don't waste water, power or food and yet they aren't lacking in any of those. In my opinion they are getting more of an education on life by experiencing where things come from. When we get lobster or fish they are in the water hunting with me, they see the prey, they know where dinner came from and they respect it. My children don't think hamburger comes from the store, they know an animal died for that meal and therefore out of respect, you don't waste. In addition to living our lives, we are treading lightly on this planet, and Jessica and I are raising good stewards of our future.

So life is well on "Thin Line" we are pretty much moved in and are just organizing and finding the best and most efficient place to store everything. We did have a small snag and found quickly our batteries were pretty much toast. Jeff had mentioned they might be getting close to the end of their lives, but we were surprised to find they were too far gone. The plates had been completely exposed and they wouldn't hold a charge. In a last ditch effort I attempted to fill them with distilled water and see if they would hold, even in a largely reduced capacity. But as soon as the power was cut off they dropped off right away and the meter looked like a damn countdown as it ticked down to nothing.

So it was time to shop batteries and while I had considered Trojan T105's I found with my employee discount at West Marine their 6 volt Deka brand batteries presented the best value. I made a trip to West and picked up the 4 they had on the shelf. Next week I'll be ordering the additional 4 to complete our new bank consisting of 860 amp hours. Not exactly what I had intended on spending money on, but hey it had to be done and now I know I am good for several years.

First step was to remove the 8 batteries stored under the bench all of which weigh just enough to make you grunt and make your back cringe. Then I had to get the new ones I had loaded into the dinghy on the boat, Colby was a lot of help.

The new installation took just a few minutes and I did decide to run the generator for a couple hours just to give them some juice since it was the end of the day and they didn't get a chance to charge. I didn't want them to bear the house load at half charge. Now that they are charged the generator can go back into storage (yay).

(Half of the new bank, perfect fit, 4 more to go)

This morning I also got to take a couple pictures of the boat, we are still getting things put away and it's a little unorganized but I promised pictures so here they are.