Off Grid

Captain’s Log – Thu 3/6/25

Another hunkered down day on the boat with bitter NW wind from the cold front. It will be down to 53 tonight…that’s cold for us Floridians. 🥶 The wind will moderate tomorrow and we are planning to go to Cabbage Key for dinner.

We are learning about off-grid life. Power is critical. With the cloud cover yesterday limiting solar output, our battery bank was down to 40% this morning. I ran the engine for an hour and half first thing in the morning to give the batteries a boost, run the coffee machine, microwave and make hot water. Fortunately we had a sunny day, which enabled us to generate 3kw of solar power, double from yesterday. I also spent some time tuning the charger settings to maximize the power generation. A 10 minute engine run at sunset topped off our bank to 100% for the evening.

For cooking, we have a propane grill and stove/oven as well as an induction stovetop and microwave that also is an air fryer and convection oven. Using those options conserves the propane in favor of the solar power. The solar also powers our refrigerator and a small freezer.

With power, we can also make fresh water from the ocean’s salt water. Since water is readily available as we are hopping south we haven’t started using the water maker yet.

Hot water is created as a byproduct of running the engine. The engine heat is used to heat the water, much like a heater in a car.

Tonight we made tacos on the propane stove as it added some heat to the cabin. Then used the air-fryer option to heat up the taco shells. The air fryer option uses twice the power that the microwave does, but taco shells are quick so it wasn’t too big a power draw. And this microwave uses half the power our old one did. It was a nice upgrade.

The boat has a starlink satellite dish for internet service which allows us to stream movies and shows, as well as stay in touch with our family and friends.

Those of you that know me well know I drink a LOT of Mountain Dew… More than we can practically carry on an extended trip. We have a “Soda Stream” which we used today to refill Mountain Dew bottles. We can also make other flavors for drink mixers. This was pretty fun and tastes very similar to the real thing. Now if we could only make our own beer!!!