Keene Sailing

Dec 23, 2012

We had dinner aboard with Liz, Adam, and Skyler last night, it was wonderful. Skyler had a sleepover with us, she really seemed to enjoy all the goings on at the marina, this morning the party catamaran sailboat next to us left for a 3 hour cruise. Everyone seems to really enjoy themselves, when they come back the music is blaring Jimmy Buffet tunes and lots of laughter and smiles. Could be the refreshments served, I reckon. After they left we got in the dinghy and went around the marina only problem I had water in the gas tank, had to row back in, now I need to find a fuel pump to fix my tired old outboard.

Here are the photos of the panels, sorry about the first one being sideways, it showed correct in the preview. These are twin 140 watt solar panels that as you can see are almost exactly the same size as our Bimini top, as per usual this was a huge project. It is doing it’s job

Dec 20, 2012

Since we arrived here at North Palm Beach Marina, we have been busy visiting with our close by Florida families. We took our son’s-in-law out for a daysail about a week ago, other than that it has been very busy with projects and making ourselves Floridians. Car, Insurance, and licenses are now Florida. Getting tags for the car was a big mess, in our moving from house to boat we lost the title for our car, lots of time spent at the DMV, but that’s done. One of the big projects on my list was to add solar panels to the top of the Bimini. Once we leave here there will be long periods of being on anchor, so we need to be very self supporting. I did my research and found a local company with a kit that had all the pieces for a do-it-yourself installation. 2 weeks ago I drove down to Fort Lauderdale (65 miles) and picked out the parts I needed, they said they would call when ready, 5 days go by I call more delays waiting for parts, I told them I really needed to get started because we are leaving on the 26th. They said it would be ready Monday, again I drive down and they act like what are you doing here! Long story short they didn’t have all the pieces so I had to drive round and find all the missing stuff. I started today, hopefully tomorrow I’ll get done I’ll post pictures of our solar panels. Next comes that propane tank project.

I think the WiFi issues are fixed, Tom suggested I check out RadioLabs,  I received a WaveRV Marine Antenna several days ago and it connects fast, basically plug and play that works. Next I need to give up my iPhone, it won’t work in the Bahamas so I’ giving it back to Chris, who has let me “borrow” it till now. So I’m going to transfer my cell number to Vonage, that way when we have WiFi we will have a phone! got to love modern technology!