Public Discussion Forum

Susie and I turned into Cortes Outstation a couple days setting a personal best of 26 straight days on the hook! I think that's something. Maybe not?

Mike Cero

M/V Sea Rose (6605)

Wow! That is a great personal record. Well done

I was kinda wondering about that with my post thinking that 26 days would be the minor leagues to different cruising areas. Wow, 100 days. That's alot and certainly a credit to you boat's realibility. I need to figure out how to get down to the Bahamas.

Mike Cero

M/V Sea Rose (6605)

When we leave SBYC (Subic Bay Yacht Club) we wont see a dock or shorepower until we return, 4-6 months later. We do often visit small boutique resorts which offer mooring balls, custom is to enjoy a dinner at the resort and get free moorings, nice to use their pools as well. Most of the time we are on the hook, again often alone in one of many anchorages off pure white sandy beaches, with epic diving nearby... just life in paradise! All this means our new lithium/solar system is dear to our hearts. we went from daily gen running to every 3-4 days, our huge watermaker and the dive compressor run on the gen..

cheers

Brian Calvert

M/Y Furthur

We left Chaguaramus, Trinidad Christmas Day 2024 and arrived at our home marina on the Chesapeake Bay May 19, 2025, a period of about five months. We anchored out almost always, using a marina for a few days in Grenada for generator repairs, visiting our friend Hugues Peroit on Selene Solar Fox at Saint Barth, where he had a mooring reserved for us in Gustavia Harbor (might as well have been a dock), then at the San Juan Yacht Club in Puerto Rico, where you really need a dock to drop off and pick up guests and get into Old San Juan to enjoy the sights, sounds and the food and drink, then at Blue Haven Marina in Providenciales, Turks and Caicos for a couple of nights, again, to be pampered and to drop off and pick up guests, and finally in Belhaven, North Carolina, where there is always a dock waiting for us as my 92 year old cousin is the Episcopal Priest in town and my Great Grandather, first mayor of Belhaven, presided over the ceremonies opening the ICW in the 1920’s.

I estimate that of the 150 or so days we cruised north we were at docks or moorings maybe 30 nights. All of the other nights were either on anchor or underway overnight for longer passages. We relied heavily on our new 1.7kw solar array, new 1100ah Lifeline AGM house battery bank and the efficient design of our vessel, with mostly gas for cooking and LED lights for lighting. That arrangement, and our HO Balmar alternator, kept our house battery bank at 80% plus almost always. A bit lower in the morning and then the Caribbean sun rises. We used the AC only when in a marina, preferring open windows and the fresh Caribbean air when anchored out or on a mooring - the Trade Winds never stop blowing. Our only mandatory uses for the generator were washer and dryer, water heater if we wanted hot water (not so much), dishwasher, water maker and scuba air compressor. We did turn off the power hungry Starlink system at night when on anchor. YMMV.

We will see how the new boat does with the LION house batteries, fancy inverters, chargers, etc., that Dylan is recommending, larger solar array, zero speed stabilizers, AC that runs on the house battery bank and other goodies going on board. It will be interesting!

Jack

Jack Burgess, Shangri-La 5388