The Annapolis Boat Show

Well, I spent the whole day at the Annapolis Boat Show yesterday and took a look at all sorts of things that I will need to do to get Pandora ready for offshore cruising. Here is a list of systems and items that I will need to settle on in order to be sure that Pandora will be ready to go. My friend Chris Blossom did a nearly a year in the Bahamas with his family some time ago and he has been advising me on what do to. Chris is a well known marine artist.

As of now my list includes the following:

New suit of sails, including a new main, jib, Genoa, storm tri-sail and modifications to my storm jib. That's the biggest single expense but arguably the most important.

Water maker. I'll probably go with the Spectra Cape Horn Xtreme as it is very efficient (about 1amp hour per gallon of pure water). The unit isn't heavily automated and requires regular maintenance but it seems to me that simpler is better, if you can call a reverse osmosis unit simple. Probably not. It's the single most expensive item on my list but getting showers and having a resonable amount of water is a must.

Solar panels. We will need lots of power to run all of our systems so I plan on covering the Bimini with enough panels to get about 125ah per day into the batteries. This should be nearly enough to keep the systems going. Plus I can supplement any shortfall with my Honda 2kw gas portable generator.

SSB radio to talk long distances. We will be too far away to use the VHF radio which only has 15miles of coverage at best and forget phone service in the Bahama out islands.

Hookah dive unit. I purchased a 110volt unit that I can run off of the 2000w inverter or directly from the Honda generator. A hookah is a dive hose attached directly to a compressor that will allow me to clean the bottom of the boat without having to surface to breathe. Believe me, it's really hard to scrub the bottom of a 43' boat while coming up for air every 1.5 minutes. I end up gasping for air and resting more time than I am cleaning.

LED light upgrades. This technology is terrific as it allows me to replace all the old incandescent or halogen (there's loads of them) bulbs with new lights that use about 1/10th of the power that the others. This main cabin on Pandora probably has more than 20 lights. However, the bad news is that they are quite expensive with the best ones that don't cast a cold harsh light costing $15 to $20 per light. Some, like the running lights can be $40 to $50 each. Yikes!

This is just a partial list of things that will need to be done and the list of little items, like minor system modifications is really, really long.