We are now slowly being “assimilated” into the Florida-retiree scene in Jacksonville while we work through some medical issues and plan our re-start of the Great Loop. I expect our hair to start turning blue-grey any time now…. :) We have started eating dinner earlier and earlier since arriving here – hmm, coincidence?
Our overall trip from New Bern, NC to Jacksonville, FL is shown below on a Google Earth map with the days of travel separated by different colors.
Our longest day underway was 9+ hours, our shortest was about 3 hours. We stayed at marinas more than we would normally for cruising (we are set up for self-sufficiency) because we wanted more of a “see the towns” itinerary - with easy on/off the boat access for this trip down to Florida.
The summary for the trip are shown below:
Miles traveled: 556
Hours underway: 96
Average speed (taking current into account): 5.76 knots (6.6 mph)
Estimated fuel burned: approximately 125-44 gallons (diesel)
Nights at anchor: 8
Nights at marinas: 25
Travel days: 15
Layover/sight-seeing days: 18
During our 3-day stay at anchor off Cumberland Island, I monitored the energy consumption of our battery bank and solar charging for two of the full days we were there.
For the truly-geeky, we have 1400 W of solar panels on top of the pilothouse, 1600 Ah of 12V batteries, and a 3000W inverter.
During the day, running only on battery power, we purposely used the microwave and stove for cooking, ran phone/tablet/laptop chargers, watched television, and our large, home-sized refrigerator/freezer was running constantly. No water heater or air conditioning is possible with our current setup.
The summary for this brief exercise is below:
Daily energy consumption: 2000-2500 Watts
Daily solar generation (happened to be full-sun days): 4000-5000 Watts
Batteries fully recharged time-of-(next)day: 1:00-2:00 PM
The batteries can provide for up to 10,000 Watts before being forced to recharge, so we could really go 2-3 days with no sun at all and still be OK. Even on a cloudy day, we still get a small percentage of power from all of the solar panels. As a last resort, we also have a diesel generator, but should not need to use it very often -- if at all.
Future plans are for a switched “load dump” heating element for the water heater to take advantage of the excess solar energy being produced on particularly sunny days (4000 minus 2500 Watts).
We've decided to spend one day a week while we are here "discovering Jacksonville" and will be reporting what we find!