Captain Ron's

Sailing and Cruising Pages

The Convenience Theory

Carole and I have been out cruising the Bahamas several times now and we think we’ve learned a few things. Of course, most of this is our opinion and so to be taken for exactly what it costs but consider the issues raised. Is every dollar spent on a boat merely a matter of convenience?

Also we keep learning, so things we were happy with last year may have fallen into disfavor this year. Currently we sail an Ericson 38 but we’ve also visited the Bahamas in an 35ft Edel Catamaran. I’ve been sailing since childhood and Carole since we were married almost 40 years ago so dial that into your evaluation of our opinions.

Batteries and Battery Charging: When you’re cruising like we do and not going into marinas very much, you’re running everything from the house bank and the use is constant and continuous. More is better. That is, more battery capacity, more charging potential, more conservation.

In MHO, your battery system should consist of a house bank and a separate main engine starting battery. You should also have the means for starting the engine from the house bank should the starting battery fail but house loads should not be able to draw down the start battery. The house bank should also be used as a single battery. That is, throw away the old “one-two-both” battery switch in favor of a main battery disconnect. Because of some esoteric physical law (Puekert’s Law) the batteries will discharge slower for a given load, the more massive the batteries. It works like this…say you have a 100 amp hours of capacity in one battery and a 50 amp load … you will draw that one battery down to 50% in about one hour. If you have 200 amp hours of capacity the same load will draw the battery down to 50% in about 2 hours and 14 minutes. If you separate the batteries into two separate 100 amp hour batteries via a switch (and use them one at a time) you will only get 2 hours of use … (these numbers are for illustration only, real experience shows that a load of half the battery capacity will draw the batteries down much faster).

Our boat has 210 amp hours of house bank capacity. I wish I could find space to bring this up to 420. Everything’s a trade off.

You also need a top of the line battery monitor system. The monitor should show you the gozinta and gozouta in a way that you can keep your charging cycles efficient. Amps out vs amps in is a minimum. We’re going to add that to our system this summer. Last season we were just guessing by digital voltmeter. When the house bank voltage dropped to 12.4 or less we ran the engine to recharge.

Which brings us to charging systems.

Last season we relied only on a heavy duty (110 amp) alternator running off the main engine, regulated by a fancy solid state regulator (Xantrex). But without solid data we were just guessing about how much to charge the batteries. Since our starting battery is separate from house loads, it was always up and never gave us any problems. We generally ran the engine an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening but I’m quite sure that this did not give us optimum or ideal recharges but it did work. Of course, here I’m talking about recharging when we’re anchored out, generally when we’re cruising, we have the engine on so charging is not an issue. What?? You say I’m a sailboat?? Why run the engine? Well, again it relates to battery capacity. When we’re cruising our electrical consumption increases quite a bit over just staying at anchor. In addition to lighting, the Lectra-san and refrigeration, we run radar, autopilot, instruments, running lights, VHF, sometimes stereo, and sometimes HF radio. We need to run the engine to keep up with demand.

This season we’ll add a large solar panel and maybe get to shut off the engine more.

Every cruising boat out there has some form of alternative charging system and most have multiple charging systems. Solar panels and wind generators are common, generators less so but many boats have them. Our new solar panel is a Kyocera 120 watt unit that will supplement our engine charging system. It won’t cover all our needs but it should reduce our at anchor engine charging to maybe running the engine every other day or so. We will also add a battery monitor system, hopefully with an interface for our PC so we can maintain lots of data. We let you know how it goes.

(Note: OK actual experience showed that we ran a daily deficit of about 35 amp hours … depending on sunshine so we ended up running the engine about once a day for an hour. Sometimes the deficit was higher, sometimes less … it seemed to depend on whether or not we watched a DVD the night before. In any case having the solar panel educed engine running time at anchor to once a day for an hour vs. twice a day)

Power Conservation:

Next to battery capacity and charging capacity comes electrical conservation. We try to minimize electrical consumption but some things you just have to live with. Some things we’ve tried include low drain anchor lights, LED reading lights, fluorescent interior lighting, and low draw fans. We also supplement our refrigeration by filling the bottom of the box with ice blocks. While we would prefer a better refrigeration system (ours is a 12v evaporative system) and better insulation, it is just not economically justifiable at this point. Shutting stuff off that's not in use borders on an obsession with us.

Weather & Communications:

Weather information is readily available in the Bahamas provided you stay within range of the VHF cruiser nets in Marsh Harbor, Nassau, Highbourne Key, Big Majors and Georgetown. In the northern Abacos, Berry Islands and Grand Bahama, the US Coastal VHF weather is still quite clear most days. We were even able to receive NOAA VHF broadcasts in Nassau. We haven’t been to Andros but you can probably get NOAA there too.

However, if you venture to the out islands, you need something other than VHF. Most cruisers have HF radio and there are several cruiser nets on every day and several very good weather services broadcasting daily that can be tuned in on SSB receivers. The best of these, in the Bahamas, is Chris Parker’s Caribbean Weather Center available every morning except Sunday year round.

Many cruisers are now using satellite phones to receive weather via GRIB files either directly or by email. Others get GRIB files over SSB email.

Last year, we had an ICOM PCR 1000 all band receiver that interfaces through our PC. While we were finally able to rig an antenna to receive the SSB weather nets, it was never really satisfactory. Reception was very poor some days probably due to atmospheric conditions and we never could receive nets starting after 9am on the higher frequencies. We had hoped to be able to receive satellite images and NAVTEX as well, which the radio is supposedly capable of, but I just don’t have the patience to figure it all out. I tried and tried but could never even get a reliable signal let alone try to decode the stuff. Some people use a small portable all band receiver such as the Sony Yacht Boy but I think their results were similar to ours. We were able to get NMN broadcasts and their forecasts but he forecast cover such large areas that we never found it useful.

This year we’re adding a ham radio (modified for Marine SSB) and a fancy antenna system. A full fledged marine SSB system (modified for Ham) would cost nearly $5000 by the time we get everything installed. The system we’ll use, ended up costing under $1000 self installed. We do not ever expect to transmit on a marine SSB channel (illegal except in an emergency) and we don’t need world wide capability for the Bahamas but we still want to chat with friends beyond VHF range. Everything’s a compromise.

We bought an Icom 718 ham radio and an Outbacker Perth antenna. This makes the install simple (no insulated backstay and no antenna tuner) although the radio is heavy and bulky . Again we’ll let you know how it works out.

(Note: The Outbacker Perth was a bust. We finally got it to receive well but transmitting was very weak due to high SWRs on all frequencies no matter what we did with the antenna leads… we ended up wiring the center conductor of a very heavy coax cable to the backstay and the other end directly to the radio antenna port. We got better reception and on the lower frequencies, our transmit signal was being heard clearly at ranges up to 400 miles away. This is with no tuner and no insulators on the backstay. SWRs still reported high but the signal was getting out.)

We are still debating the sat phone. We may go for it. We can buy a factory refurbed phone for $350 and airtime packages start at $50 per month. For an additional approx $30 per month we can get email including weather forecasts and GRIB file downloads. This system would replace our cell phone and Pocketmail when we’re away from the US so $80 a month would replace $70 per month…

There are drawbacks however. Unless we spend an additional $800 or so for a marine antenna system, the sat phone must be used outside with a clear view of the sky. This means it won’t work under the bimini even. This could be a serious drawback especially when I have to have the laptop connected up to get the weather and email downloads. Stay tuned.

(Note: We decided to go for the Sat Phone … it cost about $700 all up including a data cable but not including a remote antenna kit. It usually worked under the bimini ok although getting and keeping a satellite signal was an issue … more for voice calls than data calls. We also subscribed to Ocens Mail $225 a year…and Chris Parker’s daily weather email service …$75 for 3 months. Ocens provides a few essential services… the main one being the compression of email files that greatly speeds up email transmission and receipt. Our daily email exchange rarely took longer than 30 seconds.)

By the way Pocketmail has lost a lot of it’s glow. In previous years we liked the economy of it, ignoring the inconvenience of finding a phone. This year we bought the new model because we could use it with our cell phone in the US (way too expensive to use cell phones in the Bahamas) Trouble is, that since the hurricanes, finding reliable land line phones in the Bahamas is problematic. They work ok in the major settlements but very unreliable in the out islands. In addition, the connections often drop (whether that’s Batelco or Pocketmail doesn’t matter) causing redialing. In the Bahamas it costs $.55 per minute charged in advance. This means that just to dial a number costs $.55. Redial and it’s another $.55. In addition, Pocketmail would be downloading messages and it never seemed to finish in the last 15 seconds of the minute I had already paid for. It always made it to the next minute. We found email costing $4 or $5 per attempt. By the way this is the normal Batelco call. In Mayaguana the charge was $1 to connect and $1 per minute, plus the pay phone only got a good connection on cloudless days. In the Turks & Caicos islands Cable & Wireless charges $2 per minute. Yikes!!

(Note: Batelco changed the rules since a few years ago and now AT&T and other brands of calling cards don’t work in the Bahamas)

Cell phones in the Bahamas are also sporadic (our quad mode phone worked in Nassau but nowhere else) with the added benefit of $2 per minute air time plus long distance charges. That’s on our Cingular plan that charged $5 per month for international calling privileges… other people claimed much cheaper rates on Verizon but we were never able to verify that.

Spares:

You don’t need a lot of spares in the Bahamas except to mitigate the cost of repairs. You can get most things repaired or replaced in the Bahamas but import duties may make some items way too expensive. I carry stuff that I think will be either hard to find or is fabulously expensive. For example our 400 watt inverter was making funny noises so I thought I should try to buy a spare. I found one at the NAPA store in Georgetown but it was a 200 watt unit and it cost $80. I subsequently bought a 1200 watt unit at Sun Electronics in Miami for $80.

By the way, there are no import duties on computers or computer parts there.

I carry a new automotive 60 amp alternator as an emergency spare. Alternators can be repaired in the Bahamas. The major towns all have repair shops. However, repairs are done on island time so you may want a temporary replacement, hence my el cheapo spare. Same goes for props. Our friend bought a replacement prop for their dinghy in Georgetown for $120. The West Marine price was $95 so that’s not bad. But it did take three days to get it. We’ll carry a spare dinghy prop this year.

(Note: When our regulator failed this year, the HD alternator lost a diode. We installed the spare alternator and promptly burned it out … we were able to jury rig the heavy duty alternator to work without voltage regulation by putting a toggle switch in the field wire. The field wire was providing 12v current to the field whenever the ignition key was on … then by monitoring the battery voltage, I could shut off charging when the voltage reached 14.1 … gel cell max voltage. This worked for several weeks until we could get a new Balmar alternator with 3 stage regulator installed)

I also stock epoxy putty, Marine-tex, gasket material, umpteen hose clamps, zip ties, parachute cord, water pump parts, toilet pump parts (could be critical), electrical wire, electrical connectors, bulbs, fuses, SS seizing wire, lots of SS bolts, screws, SS shackles, SS wire clamps, various fittings, grommets, snaps, spare zincs, water filters, oil filters, alternator belts, fuel filters and Fast Cure 5200 in small tubes. Spare winch handles, sailing gear, dock lines, anchors, tools, dinghy repair kit, etc complete the list.

Speaking of spare filters reminds me that there is no place in the Bahamas to dispose of used motor oil. This is a problem especially for my engine. My engine requires filter and oil changes very 100 hours AND it requires 11.5 quarts of oil every change … yikes. We put 400 plus hours on our engine last season (December through April). That means we would need to carry 50 quarts of new oil and at least 35 quarts of used oil. No way, Jose that space is for beer.

Our solution was to install a bypass oil filter system from Gulf Coast Filters. This system retains the original spin on filter and adds a large cartridge filter that filters oil down to 2 microns. This system is used on long distance trucks to extend their oil change interval. We changed filters every 100 hours (both the spin-on and cartridge), topping off the oil each time. We sent an oil sample off to a testing lab at 100 hours and again at 400 hours. The samples both tested clean with very low soot particulates, the major killer of diesel oil. We changed oil at 400 hours but the testing showed that there was nothing wrong with our oil. Testing also reveals the metal content of the oil (various metals) that may indicate engine wear. Ours was clean. These systems should be standard on most vehicles IMHO, just for environmental reasons. I can imagine that the oil companies would resist that.

Charts and Guides:

We carry paper charts for wherever we are going. For the Bahamas, you can’t beat the Explorer Chart Books and Steve Pavlidis’ Cruising Guides. Oh we have electronic charts too… I have both Fugawi and Maptech’s Offshore Navigator. They’re nice to play with and I do use them for planning purposes but IMHO they’re not ready for prime time. We have our GPS interfaced to the PC but we leave the laptop tied down to the nav station. We don’t use it on deck or in the cockpit because of the salt air and risk of it coming off the cockpit table (even though we tie it down) the screen is also too hard to see in daylight. We can turn it down for night use. We do have a nav station that allows the laptop to be seen from the companionway hatch so we usually have it on (screen saver off) with the spare GPS busy maintaining our position but it is NOT interfaced to the autopilot. I prefer to make course corrections myself and I like to sail with my eyeballs outside the boat. Our cockpit GPS is programmed before the trip with our route and we mainly use it along with visual references to sail by. The cockpit GPS and Radar are interfaced so either one displays the relevant navigation info. We love our Furuno radar. I wouldn’t sail at night without it but it is just an extension of our eyeball navigation. On long passages I still plot our GPS position on the paper chart every hour. That way if our electronics fail, I can pick up a DR plot from the last known position easily. Lots of our cruising friends disagree with me and rely heavily on the electronics. I’m not that comfortable with just electronics. (geezeritis I suppose) and besides I like route planning the night before a trip. I also find the paper charts are quicker to use when I want to refresh my look at a tricky rock strewn pass just as we’re surfing down a steep swell on the way in.

What I hate about the electronic chart systems is the fact that they want you to draw your expected course on the screen from which it derives waypoints rather than letting me use my, often times, hard won actual named waypoints.

When we arrive in the vicinity of significant waypoints I will often mark the spot, save it and reuse it next time. I also mark these points on my paper charts and write the waypoint name right on the chart. You can do that with electronic charts also but I challenge you to figure out how to plan a route using them (typing them in by hand as overrides on the route edit screen doesn’t count) I also have found it impossible to download the 200 or so waypoints in my GPS to the charting software and then use them to plan a route. Likewise, once a route is planned in the software, I’d like to upload it to the cockpit GPS using the same waypoints ….not possible as near as I can tell. In addition, the Explorer charts have solid waypoints that I like to use but the charting software (which is derived from Explorer) won’t allow you to use those waypoints directly. Yeesh…

I guess what I really need is a ruggedized, waterproof, and daylight bright cockpit display so I can just use the software the way the programmer decided it should be done. I’m just too cheap, or too set in my ways, I guess.

By the way using the electronic charts as a redundant, back-up to our cockpit GPS and eyeballs has saved our bacon at least once … just when things don’t look right, a quick look below confirmed that we were not where we thought … I had fat fingered the coordinates of a waypoint by 3 miles …

Water:

Many of our cruising friends have watermakers. We’ve decided against it although we may change our mind one of these days.

We decided that for the cost of maintaining a watermaker alone not counting the initial investment, we can buy enough water to meet our needs. Reliable, clean fresh water is available and cheap enough in the Bahamas that the convenience of having an unlimited supply is not worth the cost. In many harbors in the Bahamas and other islands the salt water is not clean enough to risk sucking into your watermaker. Nassau and Luperon come to mind. Too much crud in the water including fuel which will kill your water maker if it makes it past your filters.

Some ports like Georgetown, have free R/O water available even if it is a little less convenient.

We spent less than $100 on water over the winter season last year. Filters for a water maker cost more than that.

Like many things, you pay for convenience, almost every decision regarding boat equipment relates to it’s convenience. Water makers are more convenient than jerry jugs, electronic charts are more convenient than paper, windlasses are more convenient than weighing by Armstrong, Stack-pack systems are more convenient than sail covers, even solar panels are more convenient than engine running time. Heck, for that matter marinas are more convenient than anchoring out. And now that you mention it, staying home would be more convenient yet … wait a minute… that would be cheaper too. Oh well, so much for the convenience theory.