Light is at the end of the tunnel, we’re not a train but we feel like we’re making progress. Things are coming together. The batteries are in (almost), the solar panels are helping us get off grid (almost), our water maker is working (almost), the mast, boom and rigging is up (almost), the fridges are working (almost), the cockpit table is done (almost), and the dinghy works (almost) but then we realise we’ve made one big but simple miscalculation in our off-grid plans...

Ok, we have all the gadgets a girl could want, a washing machine, a dishwasher, and a hot water cylinder, but none of these three utilities will work off our batteries! The current set up is such that these only work off the generator or shore power. With the our big solar and batteries we can now run these without sparking up the generator, but this requires a further investment into 12 to 230 volt inversion.

We’ve measured the peak load of these appliances and the washing machine hits 2kw when its heating the water, the water heater is 750W and the dishwasher hits 1.5kw. Mastervolt have a 3.5kw inverter that we can slot in under the floor and then run these devices day or night from our power station. And it turns out one of the distributers have two in stock, so we’ve placed an order and hope that one turns up very soon.

The cockpit table is almost up, we’ve got three pedestal legs that can be removed, two of the leg bases’ mount into the cockpit floor lockers, which we need to access occasionally. And if we’re under way, moving around, there’s a good chance that we will all against the table so a single leg isn’t going to support our weight. Especially as it can only be in the centre, the additional two legs on each end make a big difference.

The boom has been lifted using the main and topping lift and re-attached to the mast. All the lines (halyard and reefs) have been re-routed through to the helm station but the ‘organiser’ sheeves are toast! Out of the eight sheeves five of them are seized and worn to the central pin. The general advice is to pour hot water over them to dissolve the salt crystal build up that seizes them, but we’ve tried that and no apparent difference. The bolts are unwilling to come undone so we might be stuck with this one for some time.

The water maker was run properly for the first time today and at first we didn’t think we were even producing water, but after watching grass grow we noticed the tanks starting to fill. There’s only a small tiny leak on the low pressure pump so all in all we’re doing great, 200 litres per hour of drinking water (purer than bottled water) from the dirty marina salt water is short of impressive. So this is a major tick!

The fridges and freezer have been problematic, the tiny capillary tubes are blocked from, well we don’t know what, but the new filters seem to be doing the trick. Together with the new thermostats we’re almost as good as new. Except the kitchen fridge is being stubborn, it works then doesn’t work as soon as Stuart our amazing marine expert leaves. He’s back Monday to have another go at this one. At the end of the day these systems are simple and we’ll work it out.

The dinghy! OMG, we launched her today for the first time and went for a spin. It took a little while to confirm the batteries were full, but that the positive battery terminal connections were a little lose. After that we pushed off, and went for a spin around the marina. We got beyond the breakwater and soon released that we were low on fuel and that we also had a fuel leak, then hobbled back to base on fumes to lift her out and add the fuel leak to the to do list!