I’m now at Orcas Island visiting my friend Elsyee, after spending two days at Saltspring, where I found my battery wasn’t keeping up. Originally I thought it was bad, but then after running the numbers I realised that I just didn’t have enough power. My battery is only 75 amp hours, ,my fridge freezer draws 2-3 AH an hour, and my alternator only does 10-20 amps, meaning I’d have to run my engine a LOT. Normally i’m plugged into shore power so this isn’t an issue, and one night away isn’t a problem, but more than that and I’m out of juice.
This wouldn’t be a problem once I have done my battery upgrade to 400 AH and put my solar panels on, but that doesn’t help me right now. After looking at buying a bigger battery, or bodging a solar panel in, I just decided to store all my frozen stuff in Eliyees freezer and then just go without a fridge/freezer for the rest of the trip. The rest of my boat equipment is highly efficient so I should be fine. Note – a lot of people in boat shops don’t know the difference between Amp Hours and Reserve Capacity – I had two separate shops try to tell me that they were the same thing!
Leaving saltspring I was going to do some fishing off Pender Bluffs – but someone else got there first.
There were a LOT of Orcas, so I think it was a resident pod, probably 30ish, complete with lil baby whales and stuff. Pretty amazing, but it meant that fishing for salmon would be fruitless, so I carried on to Orcas so I could unload my stuff into elyesses freezer.
Oh, and more Sunset photos. It’s been pretty amazing.
