Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Projects

Its been a busy (and expensive) spring and early summer.  The boatyard at Deltaville, VA, finally got into high gear and made terrific progress on our three main projects for this year:

1.  Installing solar panels, so that we can avoid running the engine to charge our batteries

2.  Installing a second chart plotter at the helm.  We learned last summer that weaving into twisty channels on the Chesapeake required way too many trips down to the navigation station to be safe.

3. The big luxury, a watermaker.  This takes seawater, with all of its salt, and turns it into fresh, drinkable water.  In the places we plan to sail, we should always be able to buy water at reasonable prices, so economically this doesn't really make sense.  But the convenience factor, not having to plan a stop for water every few days, makes it worth while.

Here are a few pictures of the results of the projects: