She's awesome!

Posted By: Ernesto Novillo
Date: 7/23/08 9:04a.m.

Report: outside forum guidelines

In Response To: YOU KEEP THAT WOMAN! (Donnie - "DonSail" #96 - P-185)

Being 4 months pregnant, she slept alone on the v-berth and I took the port quarter berth. We only had 2 pregnancy-related issues. One was that at night she kicked the hull liner while turning (that belly is starting to get too big to sleep on her back), and every time I woke up in a panic thinking that we were hitting rocks or another boat. The other issue was that she couldn't start or pull the outboard up/down. She just can't bend over the stern rail far enough. You should've seen her pulling up the anchors! She had to squat on the foredeck, legs wide open to make room for the belly, while pulling the rode and over-sized chains. Man, I love that woman... We have a Plastimo Mini-Contest bulkhead compass. Since our winters are so cold, I'm reluctant to install it properly so I can keep it at home through the winter. So I made a plywood panel that slides to the bottom of the companion way and has the compass, fish finder, and GPS. I stole the idea from somewhere, I believe from this forum. I'm a cheap bastard, and the "solar array" makes me proud to be one. It cost $45 to make and keeps the battery charged up throughout the season. It's 4 2.2-watt panels that I bought for $10 each and mounted on a 3/4-inch PVC frame. The panels aren't waterproof so I sealed the edges with silicon. They're hooked up to the battery directly, no charge controller in between, not even a fuse (although I do feel a bit guilty about not having a fuse). The panel stays connected to the battery all the time, even while trailering. The battery was at 13.3 volts before going to the North Channel. It came back with 12.6 volts. We used it for the fish finder every evening while entering bays and anchoring, cabin lights at night, and recharged the laptop battery twice (laptop draws 2.15 A while charging, and it recharged fully in 2 or 3 hours). We also recharged a cell phone once. Mike Jones gave me a Garmin GPS 76 with Tschüss. The unit is great for battery consumption, much better than the older GPS 72 we had. In the North Channel we kept the GPS on 6-8 hours a day and we only went through 4 2500 mAh rechargeable batteries (the unit uses 2 batteries).