Equipment and Personal Milestones- A Very Long week!

This was a great big fun week.  Sometimes the milestones to accomplish the end goal are thrown at you all at once, like they were this past week.

First, my wife retired after working for the same organization for 22 years.  She may decide to eventually go back to work, but we know we’re gonna go cruise for at least the next 3-5 years.  Her retirement is a huge milestone for us, as it means we’re getting pretty close to cutting the docklines and taking off.  There will be a bit of a sting when the money from the paycheck goes away, but we’re gonna take off cruising anyways,  spending less money and already starting to practice better spending habits.  We’ve decided to get rid of both of our cars, so that will be one of the final milestones for each of us….as our cars somehow represent independence for each of us I think…but we cross that bridge sometime in the next few months.

Next, a few months ago we bought a  SilentWind Pro 12V Wind Turbine that’s been waiting on the right time for installation.  We installed it last week while we overhauled the electrical backbone on the boat and fully integrated it into the new power plan for the boat.  I’ll talk through that in another post, but needless to say, I’m pretty excited it’s up and working…nearly completely silently.

We also knew that we would need to be able to be off the grid (a slip with A/C) and still run our watermaker and other power sources for long periods of time.  I opted to overhaul the power backbone on the boat so we would be able to run most of the boat using DC systems…vice having to use a generator all the time.  We opted to route the incoming A/C through a massive inverter/charger that would be able to handle the load from our portable water maker, so we bought a Magnum MS Series Pure Sine Wave Inverter/Charger and installed new power cables to push charge up to the panels mid-ship.  The massive Magnum MS 2812 will be able to support plenty of juice throughout Tulum and was a significent investment in our own internal infrastructure.  Although we hired a very, very smart electrical expert to help us install this and the Wind Turbine, it was priceless education for me.  I’ll discuss further in another post on the subject.

Finally, the day before my wife’s retirement when we had 15 out of town guests arriving for dinner on the boat….our new liferaft arrived (2 months early).  But…so much better than late.  With me actually getting a haircut to get all pretty and trimmed up, my wife had to write a big check to the gentlemen delivering the raft and haul it on the boat.  I’ll write a much more detailed post on our thoughts on why we bought this particular liferaft, but needless to say…it’s here.  Our Revere brand liferaft arrived shiny and new, with a deck cradle.  I’m pretty stoked as this is another milestone for us…replacement of the old liferaft was one of our mandatory requirements to leave.It’s been a crazy fun week and weekend and now we’re moving on to other projects.  This week we’ll have an expert electronics installer working with me to install our Iridium Go and marine broadband router, helping to modernize our communications backbone.  I’m pretty excited by all this.  Needless to say, there was some stress last week as the entire master berth needs to be torn apart every time we work on batteries or need to get into my back closet…so I’ll include this parting shot of what the salon looks like while that work is going on…while living with a Great Dane and two small children on the boat.

We leave with Baja Ha-Ha in early November and invite you to follow our blog to share our adventures.