Ahoy

Ahoy!

It’s been a busy week here in Marathon. Hopefully our last full week! If we get a good weather window we should be in the Bahamas this time next week…

The first half of the week was spent getting real work done, the goal is to get all the hotel deals and trip outlines for all of my 2023 events done before leaving for the Bahamas, we are making good progress on that goal.

On Wednesday my new 400ah Lithium power bank arrived, comprised of two 200ah 12v Lithium batteries. I spent the rest of the day getting them installed and building battery boxes for them. I now have over 4x the battery capacity that I had before, which is EPIC. I also added a bunch of new Victron gear like new MPPT Solar chargers, a DC-DC Charger to charge the new house bank off the engine bank, New monitoring shunts, etc.

Very happy with how it all turned out, and it means running low on batteries is not really a concern for us anymore.

The autopilot project was finally finished on Friday! Took it for a test sail out to the reef and back, and performed great. So our three big hurdles to clear before leaving for the Bahamas are done.

Autopilot Replacement✅ New Lithium power install ✅ Approved pet permits ✅

It’s been in the 80s for the last week but today a cold front came through and brought lots of wind with it. The highest I’ve seen today on the wind indicator is 28 which when you are at anchor, moves you around a bit! Kinda wish I had installed a wind generator on days like today.

Since it’s so blustery and cool, we are spending a day working from inside the boat on road rally stuff, I’m in shorts and on a boat in February, so there are no complaints from me.

At 3pm CST, there will be a great seminar hosted by Adam Collins and the CYC Race To Mackinac Committee on last year’s storms during the race and how teams coped with the weather, I am looking forward to tuning into that via Zoom this afternoon.

In dog news; Bosun appears to have gotten some kind of bug bite that has swollen in between his toes and he wouldn’t stop licking it. We have a vet appointment next week for their final Bahamas sign-off, so I figured unless it gets worse it can wait till then. We cleaned it up this AM put some antiseptic on it much to his protest and wrapped it up. When I checked it after lunch it already looked MUCH better. Hopefully, in a day or two the swelling will go away and all will be back to normal. In the meantime, he’s being as dramatic as possible about the whole situation.

Hope all of you are staying warm wherever you are! Keep an eye out for falling Chinese spy balloons too if you go outside ;)