Salty Podcast #60 ⛵One Sailor’s Jeanneau 419 Upgrades🔧

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Capn Tinsley (00:00):
If you're a sailboat systems junkie or
marine tech enthusiast, thisone's for you.
Tonight, I'm joined by RichWhitlock and we're diving into
how he transformed his 2018Genoa Sun Odyssey 419 into a
fully equipped cruising machineSolar Starlink, upgraded nav
systems, you name it, we'retalking about it.
Whether you're planning yourown refit or just love hearing

(00:22):
how other sailors set up theirboats, you're going to get a ton
out of this episode.
But first, please like, share,subscribe, especially with other
sailboat geeks.
Please share the video and letus know what upgrade you'd never
leave the dock without.
Uh, I'm captain tinsley ofsailing vessel salty, abandoned
and 98 island packet 320, andthis is the salty podcast

(00:46):
episode 60, so let's get into it.
Welcome, rich thank you.

Rich Whitlock (00:52):
Thank you so much for having me.

It's my pleasure to be here oh, you're doing the,
the, the sound thing again oh,is it not giving you not?
Yeah, did it come unplugged orsomething?
Can't hear you now.
Oh, your mic's off.
Okay, your mic's off.
We're going to get through it,sorry how about now?

(01:16):
Well, you're still kind ofmaking that crackly noise.
That's a shame.
Okay, turn your mic on.

(01:37):
How about now?
Can you hear me?
Sorta anybody's out therelisten.
Let us know if he soundscrackly or not, is it?
Maybe it's just on my end, butlet's, let's try to get through
it and we'll see what.
There are a few people watchingalready.
So, uh, if you're watching outthere, please tell us if uh rich
has got a crackly voice rightnow, or if it's just me, if I'm
crazy so go ahead and tell us.

I hear you just fine, so it must just be me, but
hopefully it's not too bad um,okay, so tell us where their
boat is and where you are rightnow.
Sure, I live in Dallas, texas,but I keep my boat in St Martin
in the Northeast corner of theCaribbean, and the reason I keep
it there?
I used to keep it in theBahamas for a few months, but I

(02:17):
moved it there, really becauseof Hayden and Radine.
From there we go Island Spirit.
Yeah, hi guys, I just wanted tosay thank you.
It was a podcast that you did awhile back where they were
talking about I think it was thethorny path on how to get
basically from Florida all theway out to the Caribbean, and
one of the things that theymentioned was, you know, all the

(02:39):
different islands and thingsthat they liked about them, and
they really seemed to like saintmartin.
So, um, it took me a littlewhile to get the boat there
because you have to wait.
Uh, there's either two ways togo there.
Uh, you can either take thethorny path, which is kind of
you go straight there and kindof island hop from island to
island.
That takes forever.

Um, I can see that you're having like you're not
being able to hear me and Iapologize for that I can hear
you now now, cause everybody wassaying they that we both
sounded good, so it's a problemon my end.

Okay, cause I can hear you just fine.

Yeah, okay, and now I can hear you, oh,
wonderful.

Wonderful.

Okay, so so, um right, he heard what you said.
I did not smart move pushing toX, s, x, m, great job.

Very kind and and on my introductory screen I
sort of show the little paththat I took and I'll talk about
that in a second, but just alittle bit by way of background,
because some of the things thatI talk are highly technical and
that's just sort of due to myupbringing.
Just by way of background.
Real quick, I read the Hunt forRed October when I was in the
eighth grade and I was like Godput me on this planet to be a

(03:42):
submarine captain.
So I enlisted in the navy for ayear and then, I'm pretty sure
due to a computer virus, I gotpicked up for the naval academy.
So I went there for four yearsI studied mechanical and nuclear
engineering.
I served on a fast attacknuclear submarine based out of
Pearl Harbor, hawaii, for threeyears, which was pretty cool.
But I missed the cold war andso I got out somehow got into
Columbia University, went therefor my and I'm in my current

(04:04):
career field of turnaroundmanagement, financial
restructuring.
I kind of rediscovered my loveof sailing about eight years ago
.
I used to think that and Istill do like those old sailing
frigates, like those 50, 74 gun,like man o' war sailing vessels
, I used to slug it out back inthe day, I used to think those
were some of the coolest piecesof just engineering that mankind
has ever made, and so havinglike my own little sailboat is

(04:26):
sort of like the closest thing Ican get to that Right.
But I sort of look ateverything from an engineering
perspective when it comes to alot of these upgrades.
So that's why I sort of put alot of like thought and science
into them.
Okay, I was more than happy totalk about some of them and the
rationale.

Are you ready for me to bring out the first slide?

Yes, ma'am, okay, so that's.
That's siri or cirilla.
I named her after the witcher,the daughter in the witcher
series, um, so that that picturethat you see there, that's
actually a picture of her takenfrom in warderick wells, which
is one of the most beautifulplaces on earth, I believe next
to staniel key as well okay um,and that's their layout at the
top right.
So it's just a traditional sortof three cabin.
They come in differentconfigurations but you know,
v-berth, at the front, forwardhead, sort of a main salon table

(05:13):
, two little tables at a navstation.
Off to the port side the mainbathroom is, you know, on the
port side, with two stateroomsin the back and you don't really
see it on here.
But I've turned the inboardhalf of the aft port stateroom
into sort of like a storagelocker.
So that's where I keep like alot of this equipment that
you'll see, that we talk about,like some of the outboard, like

(05:35):
the electric outboard and thelittle dinghy and stuff like
that kind of all get shoved inthere.
So it's sort of like a two anda half bedroom, if you will.
But at the bottom right that'smy little Garmin GPS tracker and
essentially that shows the paththat I did recently.
It took me eight days to getfrom the Bahamas to St Martin

(05:55):
and, as you know, the tradewinds blow sort of east,
southeast and so you're goingright into them and it's a
disaster.
So you have to wait for thewinds to shift and there was a
period where three days wherethe winds were blowing basically
from the east, southeast, whichallowed me to kind of go
northeast, and then they shiftedto the, basically to come from
the east, northeast, and thatallowed me to kind of do that

(06:16):
diagonal down to St Martin.
So that trip was 1,300 miles bymyself, 600 miles offshore max,
and took me eight days.
So okay that was pretty cool.
That's how I got my boat tosaint martin, and I was able to
work the whole time too, thanksto starlink you were able to
work the whole time and it'sdone too, because some of the
like, if you're going to work ona boat, you want to work when

(06:36):
the weather's like nasty out andrainy and you're not missing
anything.
If it's like perfect and sunny,that you're just like.
But life could be worse.

Let's be honest right, but it's hard to work on
a computer when the boat'smoving around too much.
Yes, luckily.

Luckily like that , like siri took it like a champ
and I was kind of like tiltedover, like doing this for hours
on it.
But it does you.

You get you suffer through that's right, your boat
is a lot bigger.
That's good, okay, so let's goto the next one.

So I'm just talking about anchors yes, ma'am
, so in no particular order, I'mjust going to kind of go
mentally from bow to stern.
Um, my boat I one of the.
It was literally one of thefirst things I did.
I bought it from island waterworld.
I bought my boat in st luciaand I sailed it basically up to
mobile bay, alabama, and then tothe bahamas, then to houston.
Logging story short, it wasliterally one of the first thing
that I bought was an upgradedanchor, so it was a 44 pound.

(07:28):
The stock anchor on a lot ofthese boats is like a 44 pound
but it's a CQR, it's kind oflike what they call the plow
anchor, and the problem withthat anchor is that under heavy
strain it literally turns into aplow, like an oxen going
through a field.
It will literally just carve atrough like through the bottom
of the ocean.
And the bruce is a little bitbetter.

(07:50):
That's the one that looks likethe big claw and the danforth.
Everybody knows that's got thebig flukes and stuff on it, but
that one's really only good forlike sand and mud and soft
bottoms.
So those are kind of the firstgeneration anchors, the second
generation anchors.
This is one of the ones Iupgraded to and you see the
picture of the Rakhna on thebottom right.
These are called kind of spadeanchors and what they do is

(08:10):
their design.
They have a sharp point butinstead of like a plow that
pushes the sediment the bottomto the side, this one the harder
you pull on it, the more itdigs in.
And some of these anchors haveheld so well in hurricanes
they've buried themselves likethree feet down and it takes a
while to like un-dig it.
They're relentless.
So that's why they're kind ofcalled second generation.

(08:32):
Mantis and rachna are kind ofthe two largest competitors in
this arena and you can see therethey have a little table, an
anchor sizing table there, andessentially I kind of pretty
much try to get the biggest onethat I could.
So it's.
The recommendation was a 55pound anchor for based on the
boat's weight.
So I have 17,000 pounds, up to20,000 pounds for a storm, which

(08:55):
is that third column.
It recommends a 55 pound anchorbut based on length it
recommends a 65.
I really I came within an inchof buying the 85 pound but I
wasn't sure it would physicallyfit in the anchor holder.
So I've never had this anchordrag.
It's been amazing.
And one other thing I wanted tosay about this is don't forget
to use a snubber.

(09:15):
So at the bottom left pictureyou can kind of see a sailboat
with an anchor snubber on andthe snubber are the two red
lines there.
You always want to kind of havethat going to your cleats.
A lot of people, they'd neveruse it and so basically the
anchor chain just goes straightto their windlass and the
windlass essentially takes thestrain of that anchor.
And if you're at lunch it's nobig deal, but if that thing's

(09:38):
blowing you do not want that.
That ankle windlass is notdesigned to withstand basically
like 10,000 pounds of force onit.
So you use the snubber and youput that force on the cleats,
which is where it's designed for.
And the other thing that's coolabout the snubber is you see
that big U shape, that sag.
You want that sag in therebecause that essentially helps

(09:58):
lower the chain down into thewater more fully and that lets
the anchor get a bigger bite.
So at night I always make sureto use the snubber.
Even though it's kind of a painto to deploy, it's well worth
it.
It just helps me sleep at night.
So, okay, that's pretty much itfor the anchor.
Um, someone once said you havethe right sized anchor when
people look at it and laughbecause it's so ridiculously

(10:20):
okay so, if nothing else, usethat tip of the day so the first
thing I literally had installedmy boat was a radar.
I had the, the boatyard do it,where I bought it, um, and you
can kind of see it up thereabove the tricolor and I'm
flying the french courtesy flagbecause my boat's on the north,
uh, french side of saint martin,um, but this is the radar super
critical for night sailing, um,I believe.

(10:41):
And it's also and I kind oflove that image in the bottom
right Because that's what itlooks like if you're going into
like a little bay or somethingat night, like Simpson Bay, you
can kind of go in there, orMarigo sorry, marigo, that's
what it looked like at night,except there were literally
hundreds of vessels allthroughout.
And if it's at night, andespecially if there's like

(11:03):
backlit, like where there'slights on land and it's hard to
see anchor lights, believe it ornot, like in that kind of thing
, the radar really helps youpick things out.
But really the radar is theonly reason that allows me to
really sleep at night on theboat if I'm on a passage, if I'm
going from A to B, because youcan set up alarms.
I have two different alarms Onelooks out to the front and one

(11:24):
looks in 360 degrees andessentially the front one's
further.
But essentially if itencounters a vessel or any
object on the water, it'llbasically wake me up, and same
thing for somebody's coming upbehind me and they get too close
it'll wake me up as well.
It's also really handy for oilrigs.
If you're ever in the Gulf ofMexico, sometimes when they shut

(11:45):
down a rig and abandon it,there won't be a light on it.
Sometimes they'll put a whistleon it, but the whistle only
works if it's moving up and down.
That's what kind of powers it.
So oil rigs in the Gulf is keyand, like I said, the crowded
anchorages at night.
So the radar is reallyimportant, especially if you're
singlehanding, because thenobviously at some point you have
to sleep.
So the radar sort of acts asyour, your crew member for your

(12:07):
lookout, if you will and do youhave ais as well?
so I that's one of the slides.
I have ais received, but I donot have ais transmit okay um,
and that's the.
Originally I wanted thatbecause of power, because I
didn't want, like, there to be ahuge power draw on the boat
although now that I've upgradedmy batteries I'm not sure it
matters that much.
I just know to transmit aisrequires essentially more stuff

(12:28):
than it than it does to receiveit yeah, yeah, I've got both.

I use the ais way more and I know I know exactly
what you're talking about,because not every boat has ais,
so, um, but I think there's moreand more.

Yes, for sure that have them.

And I do transmit.
So that is nice, mm-hmm.

Okay, so this is one of my personal.
I think I have like fourfavorite upgrades on the boat.
This is like, definitelytowards the top, and I recommend
this radio strongly to anybody.
So this is a standard HorizonGX2400.
Recommend this radio stronglyto anybody.
So this is a standard horizonGX 2400.
And so if you don't want to havea AIS, basically transmit radio
which also will allow you toreceive.
This is basically the bestradio that I found that allows

(13:13):
you to receive, because it'sunder $400.
Just about every one of thesecompetitors is in the seven $800
range, but for some reason,standard horizon figured out how
to make this under $400.
The other cool thing so itreceives AIS is the big thing.
The other really neat thing isthat it has a NMEA 2000 or
SeaTalk NG connector on the backso it can plug into your NMEA

(13:33):
2000 network, and so what itallows you to do is it allows
you to see your AIS targets onthe chart plotter, which is
really really, really cool.
Sure, and the neatest thing isand when I bought my boat, I was
having trouble catching AIStargets at more than like five
miles and I was like something'swrong with this.
So it was either the cabling orthe antenna.

(13:54):
I said, well, let me try tochange out the antenna first.
So I bought a new VHF antennaand digital antenna apparently
makes some of the best.
So I got that.
And it was just night and day.
All of a sudden you startpicking ais stuff up at you know
25 miles.
When I was on the ocean sailingfrom the bahamas to saint
martin, I picked up a cargo shipat 60 miles on.
Wow, yeah, it was because themast is so high and they were so

(14:17):
high.
It just went right over thehorizon.
It was beautiful.
And then I have like a littleremote mic that I installed in
the cockpit.
That way you know you can hear.
You don't have to rundownstairs every time you hear
the radio light up, you canactually hear it.

Yeah, it's a game changer.

Oh for sure, yeah , but anyway, I highly recommend
this radio.
It's the same price as onewithout it.
Just, I highly recommend it.
So this is the battery monitor.
This is one of my otherfavorite upgrades.
This is one of.
This was probably the thirdupgrade I installed on the boat.
It's a Sly Marine Pico.
There's different ones, I thinkVictron makes one.
I just really liked the layoutof this one.

(14:53):
It essentially allows you tomonitor the battery, but and you
so you can see here in the top,in the top right, that's an
actual picture that I took.
So the battery was at 72%.
Time basically remaining tocharge was seven hours, 56
minutes.
Voltage was 13.5 and thecurrent, if it's blue, that
means you're charging, and ifit's basically orange, that
means you're just charging.

(15:13):
And if it reds, that red islike you're really discharging
that thing.
Yeah, but that 30 amps that yousee there, it's charging.
That was completely based offsolar um.
So I get all the key batterystatistics.
And also, when you're at nightand you're just running off your
battery, that time to discharge, sort of if you see it being
like three days, that reallyhelps my brain sleep at night

(15:36):
because I know that I'm notgoing to run out of battery,
like in the middle of the nightor something like that bottom
left picture.
There that's like the full kitthat includes the tank sensors
as well as like some of theindividual small shunts and you
can kind of see in the bottomright there they put up an
example where you're monitoringyour your light current, draw
your refrigerator current, drawyour instruments and then you

(15:56):
know you're charging.
I just have one shunt thatmonitors my total net in and out
.
So it's so.
I didn't need a lot of thatequipment in the bottom left.
I needed three things.
The thing is, if you havelithium batteries, you
absolutely, absolutely need astatus of charge indicator,
something that monitors the ampsin and the amps out, because
the old method of doing it,where you kind of look at your

(16:19):
voltage and, based on yourcurrent draw, you can kind of
tell where the charge is, thatdoesn't work for lithium
batteries because they maintainthe voltage so well.
So I love this little thing.
It has an app you can like,connect it to Wi-Fi and stuff.
I've just never bothered.

Mine's all Victron .
I think you've got some Victronin here somewhere.

Yes, ma'am, I have a few Victron things.
So one of the upgrades that Idid is, only like a year ago I
replaced the batteries.
I had four AGM batteries thatwere 350 amp hours with 140 amp
hour each lithium ion phosphate,so it was like a 70% increase
in capacity and the batterieswere so light that I literally
thought I needed to fill themwith something.

(16:58):
When I picked them up, theywere unbelievable and I got a
great deal on them.
I got them on Amazon for like$230.
But the important thing when youtalk about lithium batteries is
you want to make sure it haswhat's called an internal BMS or
battery management system.
And when lithium batteriesfirst came out, it was literally
just the batteries and youneeded all this special charging
equipment to make sure that youknow, like a DC to DC converter

(17:20):
and all this other kind ofstuff to make sure that you
didn't overcharge the battery.
Because I just look on youtubethere's lithium battery burning
down boats left and right, notto mention like cars and stuff.
But the internal batterymonitoring system.
The beauty about this is thatit I didn't need to change any
of my charging equipment.
It was literally justcompletely plug and play because
the battery management system alot controls the charge, and

(17:43):
when it gets up to a sufficientlevel it slows down the charge
rate and then it just refuses toaccept the charge.
And when it gets up to asufficient level it slows down
the charge rate and then it justrefuses to accept the charge
anymore.
So you can't basically burn outthe battery.
It's fully congruent with allyour charging equipment.
I did mention, though it willgive your alternator a workout.
So the normal battery charge,the way it works, is, you know,
you kind of have the, and youcan see in the bottom left there

(18:03):
, excuse me, in the bottom right, you've got your three stages
bulk, absorption and float.
And bulk is when it's justabsorbing as much energy as it
can.
But the way a normal batteryworks is once you basically hit
a certain volt it's like 14.1,depends on the battery, but it's
over 14 volts the battery willstart accepting a less and less
of a rate of a charge, andthat's because it's getting

(18:24):
fuller and fuller.
So it gives your alternator abreak because it's no longer
going at full capacity and itsort of like winds it down
gently.
The way the lithiums work is,it's beautiful because the bulk
lasts so much longer.
The problem with that is thatyour battery, your alternator,
is running at 60 amps, orwhatever its rating is for like
a much longer time.
Um, I sort of look at that asboth a good and a bad thing.

Okay.

I had something else on there.
I can't remember what it was.
Oh, there we go.
The coolest thing about thelithium batteries is that
they're much more efficient withsolar charging.
So the problem with solar isthat once you get or, excuse me,
the problem with regular sortof AGM type batteries is once
you start to get a decent chargein them, what will happen is
they will reduce the chargingrate because they're starting to

(19:10):
get full, which wastes some ofyour solar.
So it's actually almostimpossible to fully charge a
battery if you're actually usingsolar to charge it.
What the lithium does is itextends that first phase, that
bulk phase, so much further,which allows you to get so much
more efficiency or so much moreenergy out of your solar charger
.
And that's the same for theportable generators too, and I

(19:31):
have two of those that we'lltalk about.
And last thing that I like isit's so much easier on the
inverter for heavy loads.
So I have like a microwave andit's big, it's like a thousand
watts or something like that,and when I would run it under my
old AGM batteries it would pull130 amps when it was running
the microwave but under thelithiums it only pulls 80
because it's able to maintainthat voltage so much higher.

(19:53):
So the load on from the runningthe um, the inverters.
You know especially thatmicrowave, it was the worst.
Um, that thing would just drainthe battery down to like 12
volts, but when you put 80 ampson a lithium it still stays at
like 12.8, 12.9.
It's pretty happy with it.

So it's what's this portable ac that you have?

yeah, we'll talk about that in a second.
I have that one down therethat's a portable battery
powered air conditioner.
I bought it just to see what itwould be like.
Yeah, so this is an ac sourceselector switch.
So again the thing about um,being on a nuclear submarine.
And this is an AC sourceselector switch.
So again, the thing about beingon a nuclear submarine.
And this is the mentality thatI kind of brought over.
It's about high reliability,maximum reliability, and it's
about understanding everythingthat's going on on the submarine

(20:33):
, where every electron's flowing, what every circuit's doing.
Essentially, when I bought theboat, it just had a straight
shore power connector and thatwas its only option for AC.
But I knew I wanted to installan inverter so I could have 115
volt power without running agenerator or without essentially
needing to be plugged intoshore power.
But so the question is how do Iswitch it from shore power to

(20:55):
the inverter?
So there's two ways of doing it.
One is you can buy basically anautomated kind of inverter
charger combination.
I know Victron makes a lot ofthese.
Essentially what they do isthey combine an inverter with a
charger.
So if it senses that it haspower, it'll switch into charger
mode, but if it loses thatpower it switches into inverter

(21:16):
mode and so it provides seamless, basically integrity of your
115 volt AC.
The problem with that is that Inever want to rely on a black
box that I don't know what it'sdoing Like.
I want to be able to controlwhere that source comes from.
So that's why I installed thatAC mode selector switch there

(21:37):
that lets me switch betweenshore power off and the inverter
.
And at the bottom left you'llsee there's also a three
position one as well.
If you have a generator likeRarity my vote prior to this she
had a generator as well.
So have a generator like rarity, my boat prior to this she had
a generator as well.
So I had generator, shore andinverter, so that let me kind of
switch between them.
And the bottom right there iswhat you see, that's sort of my
instrument panel.
Um, you know, right by thenavigation station.

(21:58):
So the top left piece, that'sthe big piece that obviously
comes with the boat, that'swhere you control your anchor
lights and things like that.
Then I've got the batterymonitoring module, the little
box right off to the right.
The standard Horizon GX2400 ison the bottom right.
The Fusion 750 radio is rightkind of in the middle, and then
my AC mode selector switch islike at the bottom left there,

(22:19):
so I have everything justlocalized right there.

Okay.

Next up.
This is probably my favoriteupgrade.

Um is just having the inverter got a picture of
the coffee maker there.

Oh it's absolutely key and wait till I
talk about the air fryer.

The air fryer is like key.

so yeah, so the inverter, as everybody knows, it
allows you to convert 12 voltdc battery power to 115 volt ac.
And the thing is, I wanted tomake coffee in the morning,
completely quiet.
I did not want to have to run agenerator or anything and or
boil hot water to like makecoffee, I just really wanted my
little K-cup machine to work andthe inverter allows you to do
this.
Now the important thing is thatwith an inverter there's two

(23:00):
different kinds.
There's pure sine wave, or alsocalled true sine wave, and then
there's a modified sine waveand you can kind of see over
there on the right that the waythe sinusoidal waveforms look.
So the top one is a pure sinewave and if you basically put an
oscilloscope into your walloutlet at home, this is how it
would look.
You know it gently goes up andgently goes down.
The modified sine wave on thebottom essentially tries to

(23:22):
approximate that same shape, butit basically does it with like
diodes and the thing is itdepends on what you're using.
So if you're using somethingthat essentially just turns 115
volt AC into heat like a toaster, it doesn't care what the
waveform looks like.
But if you have like delicateelectronics, like anything that
has a microprocessor in it.
If you have that, um, thatmodified waveform it's, it's

(23:44):
going to just play havoc with it.
Um, I remember, on Rarity, whenI first installed the inverter
I didn't know the difference.
So I got a modified sine waveand I was testing it out on the
microwave and the microwave wasworking but it was making this
terrible like buzzing sound, andI was like I don't think
microwaves are supposed to makelike a terrible buzzing sound.

No, I'm with you, hayden Coffee you better believe
it, and so and so.

That's where I upgraded it to a slangy sort of
waveform there, it's a mustabsolutely.
And um, this one, as you can seeit kind of has like um two
outlets and so what I do is Ijust kind of went to home depot
and grabbed the um, made mylittle own little extension cord
that kind of plugged in um theydo make inverters that you can
wire hard, wire your, your powerlike directly into the inverter

(24:29):
.
I don't want to do that.
I want it to be able to yankout the cord if I needed to.
Basically.
But the coolest thing aboutthis is there's a couple of
things.
The K-Cup was literally thefirst number one thing.
Like I'd love my morning coffee.
I love that thing.
It's really handy for themicrowave and my laptop for work
and stuff like that.
Starlink also is very finicky.
Starlink loves a pure, truesine wave.

(24:50):
It does not.
Is not very happy with themodified sine wave.
But the like the air fryer,that little course Kosori or
whatever, I love that thing todeath, especially because I'm
single and like I'm only cooking, you know, like a tilapia filet
or whatever for dinner, thatthing is like fantastic.
I even calculated how muchpercent of battery if I had to
cook a chicken breast right at380 degrees for 20 minutes.

(25:13):
How much battery.
Does that draw on that littlelike 500 watt air fryer?
And the answer is 3%.
And I'm like I can live withthat because with my oven it's
like you know, two burner orwhatever it takes like 20
minutes for that thing to heatup.
Um, with that air fryer it'slike ready to go right out of
the gate you have propane I doyeah and it takes that long to

(25:34):
put it it just takes forever formy little oven to heat up and I
don't know why it's like it.
It's just.
It's just inefficient.
I use it if I'm cooking likefour or five chicken breasts,
but if it's just like one or two, hello, mr Air Fryer.

Okay.

I love that thing to death.

All right.
So yeah, my favorite equipmenton my boat is I've got, I'm all
decked out too on my boat.

Here's my Keurig coffee maker.
Yeah, I love that little one,that little, that single cup one
, it was like 35 bucks.
It's literally going threeyears now in tropical
environments and has not givenup yet I've got one on my boat,
in the house and in my campervan oh, for sure very important
the one I have at home.
It's, um, it's, it's got likethe, it's like got the reservoir

(26:17):
and all that kind of stuff.

Yeah but this one's just, this one's just a
single serve, because I was like, I'm just space efficient, but
well, that was one of the testsI did is when I got you know I
was trying to work out all myelectronics, I went out and I
anchored for like five days.
And I just turned everything onrunning coffee, everything,
just to kind of see you knowwhere the deficiencies were.

Smart.
Or you can do that in your slipJust unplug or turn it off and
turn everything on and see howlong it lasts and that's what I
love about that my littlebattery monitor is it calculates
your time to discharge, likeit'll say, like you know, eight
hours, 30 minutes or whateverit's really handy for that I
keep mine on the percentage, butI have an app too, the victron
app oh nice, yeah, that victor.

(27:03):
I use the victron app for my twosolar chargers.
They're really nice.
So this one is an isolator foran engine start battery.
So I kind of needed this one.
You only really need this oneif your boat spends a lot of
time like on a mooring whereit's sort of unattended and it's
not plugged into shore power.
So every boat pretty much hasthis, where you can see a little

(27:25):
diagram.
You've got the alternator atthe top right and it goes as an
input into the splitter and thenthe splitter basically has got
one for your engine battery andone for your house battery.
And what this?
What the isolator does is ifone battery has like a parasitic
drain or a problem or you'rejust overusing it, it won't
basically bring the otherbattery down along with it.

(27:47):
Um, and so what I did?
But that only works if you havebasically dc power.
So if your battery charger ison, which means you have to be
plugged into shore power orrunning a generator or you're
running the engine, then it'llcharge it the.
The way most solar installationsare done and the way it kind of
installed, mine is the bat.

(28:07):
The solar feeds your house bankdirectly, because there's no
way to cross connect it withyour engine start battery
without putting them in parallel, and that puts them both at
risk.
So what I did was, with this, Ibought this little, an isolator
you can see it was prettyaffordable and basically I just
use the house battery as theactual input and then it has a

(28:28):
single output which is to theengine start battery.
So that way whenever the housebattery voltage is greater than
the engine start battery, it'stopping up the engine start
battery.
But if at night and when I'musing the house battery, it
falls lower, it keeps the enginestart battery completely
isolated.
The house battery it fallslower, it keeps the engine start
battery completely isolated.

(28:48):
Like I said, this is reallyuseful if your boat's on a
mooring and you're.
You only use it like once amonth or something like that.
You want to keep your enginestart battery topped off is that
39?

I can barely see it.
That's correct.

Yeah, 39, okay there's two different versions
of this.
I actually there's this.
This is sort of the the lessexpensive version.
There's a more expensive mosfetversion and the difference is
what?
The mosfet version doesn't loseany voltage, um, due to the
diodes, whereas this one does.
But I wanted this one to lose alittle bit of voltage 0.7 volts
basically because I want theengine start battery never to be

(29:19):
like overcharged.
So this way it has like alittle bit of safety insurance
built into it and it worksreally well.
Ever since I installed this,I've never had a problem
starting the engine after itbeing on a mooring for a long
time.

Okay, we do have somebody over here on Instagram.
I had to copy and paste it inhere.
Let's see if I can pull that up.

Do you know this person?
Do you know?

Marco Giannotti.

I don't think sometimes Instagram handles can
be weird, but yes, they'redefinitely right about the air
fryer.
It's so nice the one I have formy house like has changed my
life.
Like it's so easy to cook.
Now I just I cook chicken fishsteak, you name it.
It's like it's fantastic.

So I guess he's buying a boat.
He's got a hand over going yeah, that's cool, he's got all his
important items ready to go, besure to get it.

Yeah, true weight , true sign inverter if you want
to run it off battery.
So okay anyway, that's for thatone did we finish that one?

yeah, okay all right.

So these are the little portable generators.
Um rarity, my boat that I hadbefore this had an installed
onan a six or seven kilowattgenerator.
It was really nice, but I losther in a hurricane yeah um, I
wasn't there, thankfully, butyou know anyway.
But, um, my, but, sarilla, shedoesn't have an internal
generator.
Um, so instead I got thesethings and it's funny, when I

(30:45):
went to pick up the boat in StLucia, I had I brought three
things with me.
Well, I bought my backpack, abig carry on full of like tools
and some electronics and stuff.
I had a sea bag from the Navythat was full of like wrenches
and drills and equipment.
And the third thing, or fourththing that I brought was a brand

(31:05):
new Honda EU 2200i generator,still in the box, and I painted
the box pink because if somebodytried to steal it, they'd be
stealing a pink box and at leastI could make them feel silly
while they were stealing it.

So, but then TSA went through it.

Yeah, and they like took off my tank.
I was so disappointed.
But so the 2200i on the leftthey have a smaller version
called the 1000i.
That one's on the right I havethem both.
Um.
The 2200i has bluetooth, youknow it's a little bit bigger um
, and it's 2200 is a bit mismisleading.
That's the surge amp or that'sthe surge power.

(31:42):
It can only run 1800 Watts likecontinuously Um, and anything
in between it kind of, you know,is sort of iffy Um.
But the thing about the 2200ithat I like is that it can run
my main air conditioning, a unitwhich is 16,000 BTUs.
It can start it and it can runit Um.
But the problem is is that itto start it you really need need

(32:04):
.
So, as you probably know, onyours there's an eco mode on it
and the eco mode works great forwhen you're um just uh, like
when the load is stabilized.
But if you have a startingsurge current, that really taxes
it.
So if you're on eco mode andyou're just cruising, you know
it's like at 20 percent load andyou drop you two and a half

(32:25):
kilowatts on it, it can't spinup fast enough and it'll trip
offline.
So in order to start the airconditioning compressor.
On this, I have to turn it offat eco mode so it stays at high
revs and then it can basicallyhandle the starting surge.
If I take the little one andput it in parallel with the big
one, then they're both fine, sothat works out really well.

(32:45):
But the real reason I boughtthe little one was put it in
parallel with the big one, thenthey're both fine, so that works
out really well.
But the real reason I boughtthe little one was because it
was literally thanksgiving day,2022.
I was sailing.
Um, oh, we can ask.
Uh, answer ducks, do you haveto upgrade fire suppression
system with the battery upgradeor ventilation?
Um, I can't speak to have to.
As opposed to like any kind ofwhat's the, the, the, the

(33:09):
electrical?
There's electrical code foryachts.
I can't remember what it is,but I can't speak to like what
that is.
I'm sure I have to eventuallyget somebody ABYC I think, abyc
certified to take a look andlike get my thing up to code.
I don't think you have to putventilation in.
The lithiums are so good atabsorbing charge, they don't

(33:29):
really get hot and there'scertainly no gas or fumes or
anything that comes off of it.
I mean, I sleep right on top ofthem.
As far as fire suppression, asfar as I know the Coast Guard oh
, that's the other thing too.
I'm a licensed captain.
I just got my captain's, my sixpack license, just for fun to

(33:51):
see if I could.
I don't use it for anything,but I teach the boating safety
kind of class at the freedomboat club up here in Dallas.
Um, it's Coast Guard regulationsrequire a certain amount of
fire extinguishers based on thesize of the boat and the number
of engines and I think thehorsepower.
There's like a formula for it.
Um, I don't think at, maybe notyet.
It's based on, like batterytype.
Um, that might be somethingthat they're looking at doing,
but as far as I know, I don'tthink that they've um they've
required that.
Now it might be a abyc, likethe, the yachting certification,

(34:14):
like the professional installsfor electronics.
Um, that might require it, butI'm honestly not sure.

That's a fantastic question yeah, it is a good
question thank you so much forasking that.

Now I know what I don't know, um, but it was
thanksgiving day um 2022.
I was sailing my boat frommobile alabama, um to the
bahamas.
Two days at sea, um, I let.
I think I left monday night, soit was two days at sea, and my
battery?
It was like 8 pm my battery gotdown to 50.
I'm like, okay, it's time tostart the 2200.

(34:43):
So I pull it out and yank thestarting cord and the starting
cord just snaps right in halfand I'm just like, are you
kidding me?
So the thing, one of the thingsI like about the generator is
not just that it lets me run theair conditioner, but it keeps
hours off your main engine.
And you know, it's sort of likeengines on a sailboat engine

(35:05):
hours on a sailboat.
It's like mileage on a car thelower it is, the more valuable.
You know, the more hours youhave, the less valuable compared
to another similar boat itwould be.
And the other thing is thatit's just and I try to save my
diesel fuel for actuallypropulsion, like if I so if the
mass goes down or something likethat, your diesel fuel

(35:27):
determines your range.
So I don't want to be eating upmy emergency range just to
recharge the batteries.
Um, so I had to do theunthinkable.
I actually had to start theengine to just charge the
batteries, and I was crying thewhole time and so, but I don't
take, I don't take no for ananswer.
Really well.
So, on some things, I know howto take no for an answer, but
like I don't take I don't takeno for an answer.

(35:47):
Really well, so on some things,I know how to take no for an
answer, but like I don't takedefeat very well, shall we say.
And so, um, I like it'sThanksgiving night, 2022.
I'm literally I bring thegenerator down into the salon or
the main cabin area and I juststart like taking it apart with
like every tool, and after likean hour and a half, I've got the
front off, the side off, and Ithink, heavens, for some reason,
I brought.
Um, one of the tools that Ieventually brought were like

(36:09):
medical forceps, like theselittle, you know these super
long like plier things, and I'min there like just trying to
grab the little starting cordthing and I finally like grab it
, feed it through the hole, tiejust like a little knot in it,
and I started that thing up andit fired up and I was like
little knot in it and I startedthat thing up and it fired up

(36:29):
and I was like like thank you,heavenly father.
You know, I was like I was sohappy.
Um, the only problem is, forthe next eight months I had
about a foot of cord justdangling out of the side of that
thing before I could get itfixed, but it only needed like
half a pull to start, cause itwas so good anyway, but I was
like I'm never doing this again.
So that's why I bought thelittle generator, just as a
backup, you know, for that.

Did you fix the cord?

I did.
I had to take it to a certifiedHonda like dealer just so they
would like fix it like properly,because I'm not sure I even put
it back together, right, but itseemed to work OK after that.

Well, I just wanted to let me just, let's
just acknowledge that this fellais getting a Leopard 46.
Yes, that this fella is gettinga Leopard 46, cape Town next
week.
That's pretty exciting.
That's luxury, right there.

That's a nice one .
Yeah, I know some how shall wesay some people who prefer
luxury, who only really careabout, like have no interest in
being on a monohull at all, Likeif they can't do a catamaran,
they're not interested.

Yeah, well, he probably is trying to make his
woman happy, don't you thinkthere's a woman?

behind this.
Yes, the admiral.
We all know the admiral runsthe ship.
But um the uh, but there's um.
The only the only thing I don'tlike about cabrans is that in
theory they're easy to dismass,because on a monohull, if you
take a gust, it knocks the boatover and so it spills a lot of
that wind.
But on a catamaran it just sitsthere and takes it right and so
it's easy.
It's easier to lose the mast onone.

(37:51):
So, aside from that, I thinkcatamarans have it's hard to
park it that's the truth.

That's absolutely true I don't know where I would
do that around here.

I'd be anchored somewhere, I guess oh, for sure,
for sure, um, all right, well,anyway, so that's a generator,
so I've got my little one justas a backup and when I'm
underway.
Yeah, I thought about gettingthat one.

but I found out this was going to be sufficient
and I don't have a very big boat, so that one would be just a
little too much room, you know.
But you know, I took it on my2023 trip and I never even I.
I basically just started it up,plugged in the air conditioner,
just to plugged in the shorepower, just to turn on there,

(38:32):
just to make sure everything wasgood.
But then after that I justnever used it.
Yep, I just decided I use mylittle DC fans while I'm at
anchor and just kind of sweat itout, and if I have the fans on
me, I can sleep while I'm atanchor and just kind of sweat it
out, and if I have the fans onme, I can sleep.

That's the difference.

Is that if you have ventilation blowing on you,
just a fan you can toleratelike 10 degrees hotter compared
to if there's if it's just noventilation and stuffy, that
would be awful.
There's no way to sleep in thatWell for me, but if I've got a,
good DC fan on me, I'm good.

And just open up all the hatches it literally
just brings in, like it allowsyou to sleep in like 90 degree
weather, right.
So this is a solar setup that Ihave for siri.
So I have 700 watts.
Total 300 watts is in the frontand that top that picture.
There you can see it.
I've got one big panel.
It's kind of square right infront of the traveler, and I
have two long panels that are oneither side of the mask.

(39:26):
Each one of those is same exactpanel, just a little bit
different layout and it's um sothose are soft panels.
Yes, you can roll them up into atube, basically tell me about
those are those, those are justas good, yes, so they're
actually better.
So these ones were kind ofexpensive.
I think they were like maybe250 each or something, but
they're.
They're SIGs panels and Iforget what that stands for, but

(39:47):
it's made out of a certainmaterial.
It has diodes all over thisthing.
So the thing about the SIGspanel is they're very, very.
They perform extremely well inshaded conditions.

Wow.

So that panel that you see there, the main one
that's right in front of thetraveler, it's like 50% shaded.
Normally that would zero outany like from any kind of normal
panel.
That output would be zero.
It's just not even going tobother.
I'm sure I was getting like 40amps out or 40 watts out of that
thing.
Um, so it's very sensitive,it's very um resilient, like and

(40:19):
that's the other thing too.
It's like the main sheet, thered line that you see there,
that can cast a shadow.
Most solar panels that woulddecimate its output.
This one it's like it doesn'teven notice.

So, um, it's very, it's very resilient to that so
the other two in the back, thoseare rigid ones, right?
Yes, yes, and so you just putthose others out when you need
them that's correct.

So when I'm sailing and that's obviously one
side I have a mirror one on theother side and I'm kind of
doing a no-no here.
If you have panels in the samegroup, ideally they're all the
same, exact size andmanufacturing model, everything.
I'm kind of mixing it up herebecause the back ones are
essentially bifacial panels, sothey get charged from either

(41:00):
side of the panel, whereas therenergy one, the old-fashioned
one on the front, that one isonly, you know, a uniface panel,
and that's just because theywere originally all that uniface
panel, and then I upgraded therear ones.
But the thing is, is that?
So when I'm at anchor ormooring, I'll sort of angle them
up like that, and you can seeI'm using a.

(41:21):
It's actually like a shower rodtensioner for the first one,
just that little itty bittywhite pole and that's extendable
.
You can see I'm using a.
It's actually like a shower rodtensioner for the first one,
just that little itty bittywhite pole and that's extendable
.
So I'll angle that up.
And then for the aft one, I'mjust using a buoy and the buoys
are the ones that I'll use.
Like if I'm underway and I wantto elevate the panel for some
reason, I'll just tie excuse mea fender.
I'll just tie a fender to it,just, you know, just because

(41:44):
it's like it's rugged and it'lltake it.
Those little shower rods, I'velost several of them already
because I'm lazy and I don't tieit.
But most of the time when I'msailing I just take those down
and just let the panels hangvertically and that usually
works.
That gives you 70% of theoutput but without having to

(42:08):
worry about like losing you knowa fender or you know a shower
rod or something like that.
But what's cool about the backpanels with the bifacial ones?
The bifacial ones that I gotthey're they're from Booge RV,
same as the SIGs one.
They I've had my back solarpanel of 400 Watts pumping out
440 Watts, actual like the.
You actually do get somethingout of the bifacial which is

(42:28):
pretty cool and you can kind ofsee there that's one of my
Victron.
So I have two chargers.
So you want different chargecontrollers for basically
different groups of panels andthat's to allow them to operate
at like the most efficientvoltage and things like that.
Originally I had all 700 wattswired in what I thought was a
super smart like series parallelconfiguration.
I know for the life of me Icould not get more than 350

(42:52):
Watts out of the whole thing.
I was like what is wrong withthis?
And then I broke it.
I rewired it, put all frontpanels in parallel due to the
heavy shading.
The rear panels both both ofthe ones on the sides are in
series.
Then those go into parallel.
But the trick is there I haveone solar charger for the front
and one controller for the backand that allows them to operate

(43:12):
at very different voltages.
And you can see there, just inthat thing off to the right with
the display, this is the rearone.
Out of 400 watts I was getting393, which is it's.
It's very hard with solar panelsto actually hit your
theoretical maximum.
Like it's very difficult.
But you can see here the totalnetwork power was close to 600.
So the front solar panels for300 Watts, we're putting out 200

(43:36):
.
And the battery was justcharging like crazy, like this.
That's my favorite thing to dois like see the battery charging
at like 35 amps forever,because it's not like you're
running your generator, you know, it's like literally just
charging like a bat out of heckfor free.

Okay, yeah, I have two different controllers
Victron, one for each panel, 375each, and we put in one for
each panel.

That's very smart .
That's the most efficient wayto do it.
Everybody says put them inparallel.
The problem with parallel isthat you start putting if you
have enough wattage, you startputting so much current through
the wires that you lose a lot ofcurrent oh yeah and due to
what's called the I square rlosses.

So parallel means um.
You're putting them all on onecontroller parallel basically
means like um the.

so if you have like two panels and let's say
they both put out 20 volts, ifyou put them in parallel, that
means like you have one panelhere, one panel here, and you
tie the top, top, the positiveoutputs together and you tie the
bottom outputs together, so youcan lose one panel and the
other panel will still just doits job.
That's, that's what's called inparallel.

(44:46):
The other way to do it is inseries, where you daisy chain
for lack of a better term theoutput of one panel to the input
of another.
So in this one you'd have 20volts pumping out, let's say, 10
amps.
In this case you'd have 40volts pumping out five amps.
So it's still the same amountof power.
It's just that the way, thevoltage and the current

(45:08):
essentially is different.
The problem is.
So doing it in series is betterif you don't have any like
shading or anything else,because you have a lower current
.
And if you have a lower currentyou have lower, basically power
losses through the wire.
They're called I squared Rlosses.
You take the current, yousquare it, multiply it by the
resistance.
That's the power that you losein basically just from the

(45:30):
wiring.
So if you have everything inparallel, which is which is
ideal from a shading perspective, you're going to be losing
power just due to pumping somuch current through that.
So people try to basicallyfigure out what's the blessed
bend of series.
Up until the point there I haverisk shading and then I switch
over to parallel.
So due to heavy shading, all ofmy front panels are set up in a

(45:54):
parallel configuration and inthe back, because I've got
panels on either side, I haveeach panel in series and those
are connected in parallel.

So yeah, I've got a friend who I'm trying to talk
him into getting.
I thought maybe some of thethis, this, the soft ones, what
do you call them?
Flexible, flexible ones mightbe good for his boat.
And I wasn't.
We weren't sure.
We were trying to figure it outif they were, if they were just
as good, but it sounds likethere's a lot of benefit to them
well, the flexible ones, forsure that.

But these ones you could literally roll up and
they came in a tube Right and sothey were extremely flexible.
But what I didn't care aboutthe flexibility or not, what I
cared about was that they wereSIGs, so they were.
They're highly resilient toshading.

Right.

They're the best panels that you can buy for any
kind of shading.
That's nice.
Now, one thing I wanted to makea mention of is a lot of folks
basically will install an archon the back of their boat and,
you know, put the panels on that.
And that's great too, becauseyou can use that for a dinghy
lift and you put your panels onthat.
I just don't.
I'm a minimalist in some ways,so I kind of like just keeping
things to a I like the cleanlook.

(46:57):
The other thing that a lot offolks do is they'll take their
panels and they'll put it on topof the bimini.
And that's pretty and that's agood idea too, as long as you
never have to lower or collapseyour bimini and for my boat I
love the elements and so I justkeep my bimini permanently.
I'd have to hunt for it.
I have no idea where it is.
I think I might.

(47:17):
But the point is that if youput your panels on top of your
bimini, if you ever want tocollapse your bimini to just,
one of my favorite things to dois sail at night, away from land
, when it's like pitch black out, without a cloud in the sky.
It's darker than a planetarium,because the planetarium has,
like the exit line row lightingand stuff like that.
But if you're in the middle ofthe ocean and there's no clouds,

(47:39):
it is so dark you can't eventell where the sky starts and
where the horizon sort of ends.

Here, my, here's my setup.
Oh yeah, that's beautiful, so Idon't have this.
Bimini is not up.
You can see it's.
It's folded over itself in theback because I rarely use it.
I do have the dodger over theover the uh companionway I see
that, yeah, but there's a biggap in the middle, and I like it
that way oh I like to be ableto see the sails.

I like to see what's going on, yeah because I
hate like having to sort of lookout.
Yeah, it's like running blind Ijust love looking at the sky
and seeing the stars at night,you know and you say I've got a?

um, I've got a starlink there and the garmin
radar and the uh, all my goodiesthere I love that, that's so
cool.

Oh, and all my goodies there.
I love that, that's so cool.
Oh, and you have a windgenerator.
Yes that's it.
That's another thing too, likethe, so the perfect boat would
have as many we learned.
So this is something sort ofmentality we carried through on
the submarine.
You want basically redundantbut not identical methods of
generating power.

It's not near as much yeah but at least it's
something yeah you know, there'ssomething we had a battery
reactor and a diesel generator.
So if you're, uh, if you're,I'm gonna put this up.
There's a comment from overhere on um.
This is over on uh, yeah, ifyou're at anchor, and it's real
windy at night, that's somethingyou know for sure okay.

So, and it's smart because it's diverse.
So if the sun's out, you canuse your solar, but if there's,
if it's cloudy, you you know,and you have wind, you can use
your wind.

So that's pretty smart too okay, yes, there is,
but oh, I think we were talkingabout the woman yeah, if you
follow her wishes.
But if you would, if wouldfollow her wishes would be about
.
I'm not sure what he's saying,because he has a big fridge, so
I told her I'd be a leopard forme in a nice biking fridge see,

(49:36):
that's compromise, that's a goodrelationship right there.
I knew it had something to dowith a woman yeah, but at least
she's on the boat.

She's in, she's, she's, she's leaving the dock.
She's leaving the dock.
Here's in, she's, she's, she'sleaving the dock, she's leaving
the dock.

Here's another one besides.
Guys, thank you, because Ilearned a lot in here.
Thank you so much thank you forcommenting.

Anybody else want to?

comment and and uh , hayden, I know you want to
jump in here because he's a realboat geek you know, upgrade guy
so I can't wait.
He's over there listening.
He's going to chime in again, Iknow he is excellent.

Yeah, and, like I said, I want to do a special
shout out to the island spiritguys, just because they're.
You know that.
They're the reason why I'm insaint martin here and I'm
getting ready to move the boatdown to grenada to get it out of
her.

Uh, the zone for hurricane season okay, but yeah,
they just ended their season.

I guess you saw that yeah, and they're uh, uh,
yeah, antigua, yeah, that'sright yeah, they're, but well,
the boat is where did you leaveit?

again, it was, it was not.

They didn't leave in antigua this time no, I
thought they did, but maybe I'mwrong and maybe I'm wrong.

I think they left it there last year, but anyway,
it's somewhere down there.
But they're back in, uh, philly, I guess, or philadelphia.

Yeah, and that's cool because pennsylvania that
island's got a lot of mountainsso it's really well shaded from
winds and stuff.

Oh, and if you've seen their videos of what they
do to it when they leave it.

Oh, it's insane.
I've never seen anybody.

I forget what they call it down rigging.
It's a whole operation and he'sgot it all on.
You know it's all organized, soif you wanted to have it, you
he would send it to you.
Yeah well, I told him I wantedto do a video on that and he
said it might be too boring, butI think people would people
want to know.

Oh, that's a big that's a big deal like
re-rigging, de-rigging andre-rigging.

So yeah, I just hired somebody for that no, I
hired somebody.

I was like I'm not going to touch that because.
And then on the submarine inthe military we call that safety
of ship and the thing aboutsafety of ship is like items
like sub safe, um, you don'tmess around with them.
So I wanted to make sure eventhough in theory I could watch a
youtube, read books and intheory kind of figure it out, I
just didn't want to mess with itsomething like that.

So you just took down your standing.

I mean, you're running rigging um, I pretty
much outsourced the whole thing,but but you didn't take, you
didn't mess with the, with the,the mass or anything like that
right.
No, I took the sails off tomake it easy.
But they, you know, theyessentially, you know, took the
did, the shrouds and the staysand the, the, the roller furler
and all that kind of stuff.
They just brought it down.
I mean, it was expensive too.
It cost me like seven 8,000bucks to rig it.

Um so, oh, okay de-rigging and re-rigging uh,
this is great stuff and antiguathere we go antigua okay yeah,
you're right.

What else did we have?
Oh, we've got just got a fewminutes we can.
Let's see here.
So that's a solar piece.
I'll kind of go through theseother ones pretty quick a
starlink.
So the thing I want to sayabout starlink I'm sure
everybody has it um, it is thegateway to being able to, you
know, work remotely if you can.
Um, the thing is like.

Originally I bought the regular dishy so we
just have to stop andacknowledge this one.

He says the best boating podcast ever.

We have to acknowledge that comment.

That's extremely kind sailing from.

Boston to South Carolina next week.
Thank you for your inspiration.

That's outstanding.
That's outstanding, you'regoing to, that's going to be a
beautiful voice.
So the thing about Starlinkeverybody has it.
But I was like, wow, that thingtakes up a lot of power.
Like the regular dish you candraw like 50 Watts or so and
it's like four amps, and fouramps, you know, multiplied over
hours and hours and hours canput a drain on your battery.
So I did some research and Ifound the Starlink Mini.

(53:07):
That one only draws like 15watts, which is one amp, which
is almost nothing, and so Ibought that and I love it to
death.
Essentially, with Starlink,just, I'm sure most people can
do the research, but if you'reless than 12 miles from land you
can use a Roam plan and there'sdifferent ones, but like Roam
50 is 50 gigabytes a month.
For 50 a month, it's prettygood.

(53:27):
If you go more than 12 milesfrom land, then you have to
switch to the rome unlimited,which is 165 a month, but then
you have to activate thepriority data for two dollars
per gigabyte.
But if it lets you like, dowork and, and you know, keep in
touch with friends and stuff,it's well worth it.
One thing that I have is Ibought this ecoFlow Delta 2
power pack.
It's that little thing on thebottom right.
I bought this for the originalDishy because it was consuming

(53:50):
so much power.
I wanted it to have its owndedicated power source so I
wouldn't drain down.
The one thing that I like donot like is draining my main
battery down low at night.
That's just.
I just don't want to be in thatposition.
So essentially I bought alittle power pack just for it's
like a thousand watt hours, soit can do okay.
I bought a little power pack soI could control and sort of

(54:11):
segregate the original Dishy at50 watts, keep it just separate,
but at 15 I still use it forthe mini.
But at 15 watts that thing willlast forever.

So it's just nice to kind of have on its own
little separate circuit now,okay, so this may have changed,
but um, I thought it was 40miles offshore no, it's, it's 12
.

Um, if they and there's a couple different
things about it too I have themobile one like you yeah, it's
165.

And then the other one which, of course, this was
probably changed was like 200 ifyou're going to go further than
40 miles yeah it's, it's 400,it's.

So there's different.
Yeah, there's like 250 plan andthere's other things, but it
literally will stop your servicemid -sentence if you go more
than 12 miles away, if it'sconsidered offshore.
Now, the cool thing about, Ithink, most of the Bahamas it
doesn't like plot out theindividual islands just like,
okay, this is the Bahamas, but Iknew that whenever I'm more
than 12 miles offshore I have toactivate my um.

(55:08):
I upgrade to rome unlimited andthen activate the priority data
and it'll work.
Um, the thing about starlink tobe aware of is that they have,
essentially, starlink looks atthe countries in, or the world
in two through two lenses.
One is does starlink have anagreement with this country?
If so, then essentially you canstay in that country as long as
you want.
They don't care where youraddress is.

(55:30):
However, if Starlink does nothave an agreement with that
country, then it only lets youstay in that country and use
Starlink for up to 60 days andthen it will hard cut you off.
And that's because, essentially, under 60 days you fall into
the transitory category andunder 60 days you fall into the
transitory category and over 60days you fall out of the
transitory category and you haveto upgrade to like the $400 a

(55:52):
month plan or whatever.
So what you want to?
The cool thing about the mini isI can just stuff it in my
backpack, take it back to the U?
S, and it has its own routerbuilt into it too.
I can just stuff it in mybackpack, take it back to the U?
S, turn it on, reset itslocation and go anywhere in the
world for another 60 days.
Otherwise I'd have to belugging that huge dishy and the
router and all that other kindof stuff.

Okay.

All right, just watch out for that 60 day thing
if you're not in a Starlinkfriendly category.
So the grill I'll go throughthis one quick.
A lot of people have like amagma grill which is sort of
marine marine designed.
But I did a lot of research onthis and a lot of people swear
by this grill in a marineenvironment.
The weber q 1200, the they callit the baby q.
Um, essentially one thing Iwanted a grill.

(56:37):
I wanted to heat up quick butalso be resilient to like if
there's a gust of wind it'sstill, it doesn't blow out the
the flame.
And apparently this baby q islike one of the best for that.
So I I bought on amazon a pieceof starboard, which is that
white base, and then I mountedit down.
Um, then I basically bolted itonto the base with these little
connectors very cool and then.

(56:58):
So I use my little that thingthere.
It's cool because I have thetemperature gauge and stuff too,
but this is like reasonablypriced, it's like 200.
There's an old joke.
You can actually find it online.
It basically shows ascrewdriver and it says
screwdriver two dollars.
And then it goes boatscrewdriver four dollars.
And it's the same exact thing.
Just adding marine on somethingtriples its price.
And I think magma has gottenaway with that for a long time

(57:20):
yeah, they're pretty expensivefor sure, for sure.
But this one does the same job.
And you can see I bought thoselittle um, those little uh,
grill rail clamps on the topRight.
That's what I use to mount tothe bottom of the starboard.
And then, the important thing,in the bottom left picture, I've
got a little back brace.
That back brace is key becauseit keeps it flat, because if
otherwise, if you open up thelid, it puts a lot of weight on

(57:42):
the back of it and without thatback brace it'll just like
literally just fall over.
It's a lot of weight on theback of it and without that back
brace it'll just like literallyjust fall over.
Um, and I also looked at okay,well, what's the proper way to
hook up your propane tank toyour marine grill?
And magma wants like 200 forthis, like regulator, all this
crap.
And I was like there's got tobe a better way to do this.
And then I found on amazon thatlittle adapter tube right there

(58:02):
.
Literally it's like 20 bucks.
You just screw one end.
My boat has two propane tanks.
One of them's permanent, like Ijust keep it connected to the,
the main internal grill andstove.
The other one I just hooked thelittle green thing up to the
tank and then hook the other endof it right up to the grill and
it'll last forever.
It'll last me like a year yeahit's real.

It's real, I have a connector like that, but I'm
not, haven't used it.
That's.
That's awesome that you're thatyou're making use of that.

Oh, it's nice because I have a dedicated tank
for the internal stove and onethat I dedicate for the guys, I
have to also, and I'll be a longtime to.

Before I get to the second one, and especially
now with the air fryer.

Oh my god, I use so much less gas that air fryer
oh yeah I tell you, leslie didme a solid on that one.
So portable air conditioner.
So this one is like coming.
I just bought it just to seewhat it was like.
So that's a picture of it setup there on my salon table and
the tubes are once for theintake and once for the exhaust.
Um, with an air conditioner,you want to make sure that, um,

(59:04):
you have a dedicated intake anda dedicated exhaust, because
otherwise you're just basicallyrecirculate.
It's using the same air toessentially that it blows to
heat and cool, and it's not agood idea you see this, hayden,
you got a portable airconditioner so it's not just
that.
The cool thing about it is thatit's battery powered because,
like, I've got a main airconditioner that's built into

(59:25):
the boat.
But I don't really only usethat if um to entertain like a
yeah for shore power, or likethat poor little honda eu 2200i
if I want to emergency.

I'll heat emergency so this one's battery
powered.

The wave two is what I have.
It's the 50 um 100 btu.
The latest one that they have,the wave three, you know, came
out a few months ago.
It's like 6500 btu, so ofcourse they're going to improve
it right after I buy it.
Yeah, and um, but it's nice.
It'll run three and a halfhours Um, and it's only like
5,000 BTU, so it's not going tomake your boat freezing, but

(59:58):
it's fantastic for either spotcooling or reducing humidity and
how much does that cost?
Oh, oh, it was like a thousanddollars I think, but I mean, I
was like whatever, let me justtry it oh, don't let radine, see
this stop so the coolest thingabout it there's two things.
One is so you see, like thefront of it right there and
there's a little vent out,outlet, vent on the top,

(01:00:20):
literally.
It's one thing that if you'retrying to cool down your whole
boat, but if I'm like doing workor something or I'm just
reading, I'll just sit there,I'll point that the outlet right
at my face from two feet awayand it is.
You don't care how cool therest of the boat is.
If you're just like have 65,you know 60 degree coolness

(01:00:40):
blowing on you, it's so greatand the coolest.
And I also have a littleadapter that I can put on the
front of it that essentiallytakes the air outlet, the
discharge of the cool air, and Ijust it's a tube, I just run it
straight from the dischargeright into the front cabin where
I sleep at anchor and itliterally will cool down the

(01:01:00):
front cabin like really, reallyquickly.
But the coolest thing is thatit just reduces humidity.
The other cool thing is that itdoesn't rely on the main ship's
battery or ship you can tellthem Navy boats battery and it
doesn't require me running theHonda generator for it.
So I can just run it three anda half hours.

Capn Tinsley (01:01:17):
You're a power guy .

Rich Whitlock (01:01:19):
By the time it dies.
It's all about power management.
So I looked at a boat.
There's four things you need tomanage, almost in order
buoyancy.
So I look at a boat.
There's four things you need tomanage, almost in order
buoyancy, water or buoyancy,propulsion, water and food.
If you have those things, andpower is the fifth one.
So if you can manage, if youcan manage those five things
buoyancy, propulsion, power,water and fuel you are like good

(01:01:40):
to go.

So buoyancy is very important.

Buoyancy is like that's the number one, but.
But so I try to keep itsegregated so I can just run
that thing till it dies and I'malready asleep and I'm good to
go.
So dinghies, so I think that'sthe one up next.
So of course I have threedinghies because one's not
enough.
The first one I bought was thisthis West Marine PHP performance
high pressure three, 10,.

(01:02:10):
It's a 10, 10 foot but it hasthis inflatable high pressure
keel and the idea behind it isthey were trying to figure out
how do we make a best of bothworlds that has the performance
of a rib with the basicallystorage ability of of a complete
, of a complete inflatable.
And this was the closest thingthat I found.
I was actually able to get itup.
It gets up just fine on mythree and a half outboard
horsepower outboard of struggles.
I used to have a two and a halfI could get it up on.
It flies with my six, but I canjust store it deflated in
between the helm station.

(01:02:30):
So it's just great, I can storeit without having to it doesn't
?
I don't have to put it up onthe deck, it literally will
store anywhere.
So the second one is this littleeight foot dinghy, this roll up
so you can see it over there.
It's like that are you 250 orwhatever?
It barely holds me.
Um, you know it's eight feet.
Um, I had some yachties call itthe cutest outboard or dinghy

(01:02:53):
they've ever seen.
Um, but I mostly got it for thekids, because and kids I define
on a boat as anybody eitherunder the age of 35 or doesn't
know the difference between likea line and a rope, right, or
like a sheet and a stay.
If you don't, then you thenyou're a kid.
And the thing is, when you havea kid on a boat, you basically
tell them two things don't touchanything and don't do anything.

(01:03:15):
And they get.
Basically there's nothing forthem to do.
So I got this dinghy.
It was it was.
I was actually buying theelectric outboard I'll talk
about that in a second but theywere like, hey, for 200 bucks,
do you want this brand newdinghy?
We've never used it.
I was like, yeah, that'd begreat for the kids.
So if you have kids on board mykids are 14, girl and 11, boy
you just inflate this, put theelectric outboard on it and just

(01:03:37):
tell them to go have fun, andthat lets them do their own
thing.
And then the last one I justbought this a couple months ago
as an eight foot rib.
I finally like got a real rib.
That's the bottom left.
It's actually a high field, butthat's a West Marine one.
It's pretty tiny, but justbecause of it's a rib or
whatever, like I love havingthat hard bottom.
Like you step into it and youdon't feel like the squish.

(01:04:00):
You know it's like such a it'sand I can get it up on plane
easy with that six horsepoweroutboard that I have.

We have a question from Instagram and.
I think that Hayden can answerthis.
He just had some made somewheredown there when to buy chap
covers to the dinghy.
I have a Taka Cat.
I would love to find for a TakaCat.

So my little dinghy, the one one for the kids
, the kids named it lord farquadum.
I don't know if you ever sawthe shrek.
You know that little short johnlithgow, like guy the prince,
the evil prince or whatever,like he was so tiny, like they
called.
They called the dinghy lordfarquad um.
But that one in my main dinghy,which I call kelpie, which is
um cerilla's horse, um, boththose are fully deflatable, so I

(01:04:46):
just kind of shove them likeand cover them up.
I have a cover that's designedor just that I got off Amazon
for like 50 bucks that covers upthe inflatable dinghy.
I don't have a chap cover forthe for the rib yet, so that's
something that I probably needto get.

Yeah, right now it's just stored on the four
deck upside down, but that's agreat question and I'm gonna
have to research if anybody outthere knows where I can get um
dingy dingy chaps for a tacocat.
You know, the little catamaran.
Oh, those are so cool yeah andI got that because I could um,
okay, hayden says some, I got it, so I it folds up and goes into

(01:05:25):
two bags inside the boat andwhen I get across the gulf then
I can put my you know, put thewhole dinghy thing together, but
I prefer not to be swinging,you know, as I'm going across
the gulf.

I know exactly what you mean.
Yeah, okay.

So he says most canvas makers will do chats for
about a thousand bucks.

That's expensive.
Woo-hooo, I checked Craigslistmarketplace first.
Or sorry, nobody uses thatanymore.

Facebook marketplace yeah yeah you, you
are good at finding deals,mm-hmm and that's a lot right
there yeah, for sure but if youwant to protect your million
dollar dinghy and the next stepI have the outboards.

Um, so I have three outboards because of
course I do um are all these onthe boat?
yes, for sure, oh my gosh, andit's, it's stuffed, but I make
it work.
And um, you got a bigger boat.
Like I said, I had to sacrificehalf the aftport stateroom to
get it to work.
But there's a reason for eachoutboard.
So the three and a halfhorsepower Mercury, that one's

(01:06:30):
really light, that's only 40pounds and it's easy to mount in
tough conditions.
So if you've got one or twofoot waves or swells or whatever
, if you've ever tried to mounta heavy outboard onto a dinghy
when the dinghies and the boatis like going like this, it's
not the time to do it.

It's no fun at all .

No so it's.
So the the little outboardweighs a third less than the big
one, so there's less risk of it.
Basically, you know, joiningdavy jones locker um.
So that's pretty much the themain reason why I have that one
um.
Plus, I needed a backup umbecause's propulsion.
So then I've got the Tohatsu.
This is like a 2005, a littlebit older, so it's a five

(01:07:10):
horsepower.
Oh, very cool.
Do you want to talk about hisquestion?
Let's see here.

Yeah, I'm sorry about so many questions, but I
live in Brazil and I haverestricted options.
But thank you, profile.
Thank you, canvas shops Okay.

He's talking about the canvas shots, yeah,
yeah.
So the thing about the, thefive horsepower outboard is and
this is true for any outboardwhere they offer a four, five
and a six horsepower model lookat the weights.
The weight of the outboardbetween the four, five and six
guarantee you it's the sameexact weight, which makes you
wonder well, why is it different?
The answer is a carburetor.
It's the.
It's the cheapest trick in thebook, like all they do for to up

(01:07:51):
the horsepower is they put in abigger carburetor.
Um, so I took my fivehorsepower outboard, bought the
six horsepower carburetor forlike a hundred bucks and now
I've got a six horsepoweroutboard.
Um, you know, if you go from afour to a six, you might need to
change the propeller pitch orsomething, because you know
whatever.
But um, point is, is that thefour, five and six, mechanically
they're the same.
If you look at the partscatalog, a lot of these things

(01:08:12):
the only thing that's differentis the carburetor.
So just buy the bigger carb,put it on, see if it works.
But so this horse, this five,six horsepower, to hot suit to

(01:08:32):
install it if it's relativelycalm, but it can get that rib up
on a plane like nobody's joke.
I mean it flies and it has anexternal tank and so you fill it
up and it literally goes likefor 50 miles or whatever.
It's really nice because thatlittle Mercury, it has the
internal tank.
So I always have to carry aspare gas can and a funnel with
me to fill it up.

I have one of those Mine's two and a half.
Oh yeah, I had a two and a halfYamaha.

Yamaha, I think, makes some of the best outboards
, like some of the most reliable.
And then the third one that Ihave is this Torquedo, this
electric one I was just wanting.
I bought it like for novelty.
But there's two things that Ilike about it.
One it is ridiculously easy tomount.
You could mount this thing likein a hurricane, because it
comes in pieces.
The whole thing's like 30pounds, um the the base of it,

(01:09:08):
the base of it without thebattery is like 20 pounds, so
because it detaches, then youinstall the control handle,
which weighs like one pound, andthen you install the battery,
which weighs like 10 pounds.
So it's 30 pounds total, but inpieces.
It's so easy to get on, um, butthe thing that I like most
about it is that it's guaranteedto start.
My greatest fear is taking mydinghy to like some snorkel spot

(01:09:31):
out, like in the ocean, likeaway from land, where you're not
in a bay or something, and youknow you anchor, you go snorkel,
you come back on the dinghy andthe outboard doesn't want to
start.
That's like one of my greatestfears.
And so this little electricthing starts every time without
question.
So if I ever need to worryabout the reliability of making

(01:09:53):
sure I can get back.
I'll always generally take.
I'll make sure it's withinrange and then I'll make sure I
take that thing, okay, um.
The other thing is, since it'selectric, in theory you can
charge it with solar and um, butyou'd have to carry the panels
around and it would chargereally slowly.
It's like a thousand watt hourbattery.
So if you had a hundred wattsolar panel you'd have to charge
it under perfect conditions for10 hours to like fully recharge

(01:10:15):
it.
So it works.
It works great in theory.
I've done it once to see whatit if just to say I did and I'm
not sure it did anything at thebottom right um, is like the
little table that they give you,basically with the range.
They say essentially it lasts45 minutes at full power and
your range is like five miles.
Um, if you go at half powerit'll last like six hours and

(01:10:36):
your range is like 18 miles orsomething like that.
I've never tried to test it,but um, in theory it's nice to
have but, like I said, thebiggest thing for me is that
it's guaranteed to start.

I can't believe you carry three.

Oh for sure, and I just stuff them anywhere I can
.
But they're actually pretty.
The coolest thing is I managedto figure out how to stuff them
without putting one of them onmy little outboard holder in the
cockpit, because I don't likeseeing the outboard there.
So I shove one of them in theport cockpit locker, one of them
starboard cockpit locker.
Those are the two gas ones andthe third one I shove um in that
port, um aft port stateringbasically.

so none of them are like you can really see
everything's on the port side,so you have something else on
this on the starboard side, toto balance the weight to balance
it.

Yeah, no, that's where the spare anchor.
So I told you the 65 poundmantis I bought, I still kept
the boat's original 44 pound cqrthe power load is heavy.
Yeah, and then, and then I'vegot the um sadly, since it's
just me and I don't carry manyprovisions like it's still like
there's a lot of water linesstill exposed, um, but then I've
got like a 30 pound danforth orwhatever that's stuffed

(01:11:41):
somewhere wow but so for thischart plotter, so this is super
important.
So for the chart plotter, sothis is super important.
So for the chart plotter.
It came.
The book came with a RaymarineAxiom 9.
But the thing about the regularAxioms is that they're very
touchscreen, they're touchscreenonly, and maybe Raymarine is
just really bad about this.
I don't know if like B&G, Ithink, or Garmin or whatever
like, are better.
If there's like anycondensation on the touchscreen

(01:12:04):
at all, it just will go crazywhen you try to touch it, which
isn't great.

So that's not good it's really designed.

These things are really designed for like power
boats, where you've got insidethe cockpit the pilot house and
stuff.
I don't know why they put themon sailboats, but anyway.
Point is is that, for thelongest time, if I ever wanted
to touch the screen, I wouldhave to go down and get a paper
towel and wipe the screen dryand then try to touch it, and
the worst part, though, wasswitching it basically.

(01:12:33):
So, at night, you turn it on tofrom, basically, day mode into
night mode, where it's um, itturns everything like red and
black, um, and then I turned thescreen intensity down.
The problem is, if you forgetto raise the screen, the
intensity of the screen, andswitch it back to day mode.
Now it's so, now it's light outand the screen is black because

(01:12:56):
it's in black mode and it's sodim you can't see it.
So I would have to do andliterally it's just all
picturesque I would have to graba towel, a dark towel like that
dark purple one you see abovethe starling.
I would have to grab that, putmy head next to the screen, put
the towel over my head and thescreen to basically create like
a mini dark room so I could seethe screen, and then actually

(01:13:17):
use that to raise the intensity.
Anyway, so my company was havinga good year.
It's nice to own your owncompany.
You get to reward yourself.
So my company was having mygood year, so I decided to
reward myself and I was like youknow what?
I'm going to get a bigger one,I'm going to get the 12 instead
of the nine, but I'm going toget the pro.
And the thing about the pro isthat it has the buttons like
right on it, so right off to thething, that you can like move

(01:13:37):
it up and down.
But the important thing is ithas a power button there and if
you just keep pressing the powerbutton, it'll change the
brightness, the brightness up.
Yeah, that's like a garmin yeah,and then you can just hit the
switch it over to day mode andI'm like I love this thing so

(01:14:00):
much.
I mean it's two thousanddollars.
I can't say like, yeah, like Isaid, I was blessed because my
company was having a good year.
I don't know if I was more.
If I was.
Whatever, the point is is thatit was a nice luxury for me.
But the point is is that if youhave a Raymarine thing, either
prepare, have a towel standingby for when you need to switch
it into day mode, and they dobuy the little keypad.

(01:14:22):
You can essentially buy itseparately.
It's like 400 bucks and it doesthe same thing, so you don't
have to buy a brand new chartplotter.
I wanted a bigger one.

Um, but that's pretty cool.
Garmin, I'm a.

I'm a garmin gal and uh, I know that hayden has
bng yeah, I'm pretty sureraymarine has been really buggy,
um, and so I mean it's okay, I,I had it, I everything was
already outfitted with raymarine, so it would have been okay.
I had it like everything wasalready outfitted with Raymarine
, so it would have been likereally intensive to switch
everything to something else.
I believe, like B&G and maybeGarmin, like I would recommend

(01:14:54):
them.

I've had a lot of problems with the Raymarine
stuff so this one from Instagramsaid hey, can you check my
message when you get the chance?
Is that, who is that directedto land on salsa official?
Yeah, do you know that?
Do you know?
Okay, so tell us what you'retalking about and we'll try to
get that answer.

(01:15:14):
And here's another on your longsail, that far from land.
Did you make any changes orspecial preparations,
reconfiguring things like for sogreat question?

like that is such a fantastic question, right and
so.
So the thing is, um, you checkthe forecast often, and one
thing that a lot of people do isthey will reduce sail at night.
They'll essentially put in thefirst reef on either the main or
the jib at night, just in case,like there's a gust or
something.
Yeah, because if you don't wantto be at night fighting a sail,

(01:15:47):
it's just no fun.

Yeah, too late.

So that is one thing.
Any changes to specialpreparations I did buy I don't
really talk about it in theequipment, but I do have a
drogue on the boat.
I have two different ones.
And then I bought a sea anchorright before I left, just like
an 18-foot parachute anchor.
I think it was by Paratech orsomething.

(01:16:13):
Um, just in case a hurricaneshowed up on top of me.
Um, I've I keep it in the Fordcabin.
I've never used it.
Um, mostly I just plotted outyou know what food I needed.
Um, the one thing that I did dois I enlisted the help of, uh,
chris Parker for marine weatherservice, um, and basically was
emailing with him and was like,hey, what do you think about
this, what do you think aboutthat?
So, between that and usingPredict Wind, I was able to.
I had pretty good confidence inessentially that trip, which is

(01:16:34):
why I sort of left.

Yeah, the weather and making sure your boat,
everything's working and are themost important things, and I
can't do the work myself, likeyou, so I have the rigger come
out and I can't do the workmyself, like you, so I have the
rigger come out and I have himmake his inspection, and then I
have other guys come out andcheck every, every hose, every,
every clamp, everything andweather, yeah, and I have a

(01:17:00):
weather expert that I consultwith and I've gotten pretty good
at it too, but I always get aconsensus, you know, mm-hmm.
Concur, okay, so Hayden saysB&G has touch buttons?

yes, just like mine does.
Thank God for that because,like you don't want to be, if
that screen gets wet, you do notwant it to be useless yeah,
that's a little yeah, like Isaid I would have to.
I went through so many papertowels when I first bought that
boat, just wiping that thing offjust in the middle of the ocean
.

Oh but-.
So why didn't you get a?

Garmin.
Oh cause, I would have had tochange out the wind speed sensor
, the radar, it's like I justdidn't want to have to mess with
it.
So I was.
You're sort of like, at somepoint you're locked into it, but
I will.
So the.
So the thing that gave meconfidence about sailing that
far and I've sailed my boat five, 6,000 miles by myself I think
so, and don't ask me if I, likeyou know, keep a proper watch at

(01:17:52):
night.
I'm not going to answer thatbut the thing about someone once
said your boat floats the samein the middle of the ocean as it
does in a bathtub.
The physics are the same.
It's not like, oh, I'm 600miles from land, so now the
boat's going to sink.
Like something bad has tohappen to you for the boat to
sink, and usually what happensbad is not.
Is the waves right?

(01:18:13):
A boat can handle plenty ofwind.
Where it's not great, it'shandling waves.
So it's very important to youknow, understand the weather.
And in fact, captain Tinsley,as you know, like from your
Coast Guard license, you know athird or like a quarter of your

(01:18:34):
Coast Guard license test whenyou go to test the four modules.
It's about weather.
And the reason is is because,like, if you're in a power boat
or something and there's likebad weather coming up and you're
smart like there's.
So, if you're on a boat,there's things like collision,
like running into something,trying to dock it, going down a
narrow channel, understandingthe rules of the road.
These are all things that youhave some control over, right,
the thing about weather is thatyou have no control over it and

(01:18:55):
it happens to you.
You're not a willingparticipant in it.
You can be like it's like thatold expression, you might not be
interested in police, butpolice are interested in you.
It's one of those things wherebad weather happens to you and
there's nothing you can do aboutit.
So, um, it's important.
The most important thing handsdown, is just like making sure

(01:19:16):
the weather, and to me, thesecond most important thing was
the autopilot.
Um, because making sure thatwas like in good condition,
because the autopilot,especially if you're single
handing, serves as your secondcrew member.
And I did have a problem withmy autopilot where the actual
autopilot, the display box forit, kept saying no pilot.
I was like, oh no, this do notbreak.
Like right before I go on thisthing, cause you can you imagine

(01:19:39):
for eight days by yourselfhaving to steer a boat Like the
most mental?

No, I do know somebody that happened to going
across the Pacific.
I saw that on one of yourpodcasts waves, oh, my god
insane what a misery.
Mentally it's exhausting yeah,like most people, there's no
sleeping in that yep most peoplecan steer a boat like on a
single course.

It's one thing if you're going through a busy
harbor, because then you're likebusy, right, but if you're just
going from a to b for athousand miles, people will go
mentally crazy after like anhour of just steering the same
course.
So your autopilot, that's theonly thing that lets you like
breathe, sleep, eat, go to the,you know, go to the bathroom,
whatever.
So it started saying no pilotand I was like, oh my God.
But then I realized it wasstill working, even though it

(01:20:19):
said no pilot.
And what I realized?
It was just a bad connection onthe box, like the autopilot
computer and the RAM and all theelectronics were fine.
It was just a bad plugin to thebox.

So, um, that's what did you do?

Oh, I just basically just kind of shimmied
the plug and pushed it up sothat it would have a stronger
connection and it was fine.
It's it's been.
It's been fine since then.
Um, but even then I could stilluse.
So the cool thing about theautopilot I'm sure B and G is
the same I can control theautopilot not just from the
little autopilot control box,the little multifunction display

(01:20:53):
that they have, but I can alsocontrol it from the chart
plotter screen as well, liketell it to go left 10, right 10,
steer this course.
So it doesn't matter if there'sa bad connection to that little
control box, if I can control itright from the being, right
from the thing itself.
So and then I think the lastslide I had was just about
bottom sonar imager.
I always thought that I waslike you know, I wanted to be

(01:21:15):
like Jacques Cousteau, you know,or like Indiana Jones or, even
better, bob Bollard.
He was the guy who found theTitanic, or led the team that
found the Titanic, like you kindkind of see here.
So this is just this littleReal Vision 3D transducer.
I screwed it in, mounted itright behind the rudder, and
it's actually better, if youhave one of these, to mount it
as far forward of the keel.

(01:21:35):
So you get it.
You know it's coming before thekeel hits it, but the point is
I got mine below the behind therudder.

It's really, really useful in shallow water
because you can see if the depthis going up or going down, but
not just the rate of, but youcan also see the rate of the
depth going up.
What is, what is this righthere?
Oh, you can't see it, but thatlittle thing that's sticking up
that's a sunken sailboat oh sothat's what they're trying to
show you.

So so the top left.
So this is the reason I likethe screen show you.
So.
So the top left so this is thereason I like the screen is it's
showing you three things.
So this imaging, sonar, thereal vision, rvx it's really
cool.
So the top left is a fishfinder.
So that's really it's lowresolution, but it's great for
like finding fish, because fishshow up is basically big red
things and I heard that's likethe air in their lungs.
I don't know what it is.
But the bottom left is thebottom left quadrant.

(01:22:26):
That's called the down vision.
So that actually just looksdirectly below you and it paints
a picture of everything thatyou see and it looks sort of
like 20 degrees off to eitherside, so it does have a little
lateral movement in it, butthat's a sunken sailboat.
Um, the bottom right is what'scalled side vision.
So this, this view, looks offto the side and it lets you and

(01:22:46):
that where it's black, that'sbecause it's it doesn't see that
because that's covered by thedown vision on the bottom left.
So the down vision on thebottom left shows directly below
you and then the bottom rightshows you out to either side and
so you can see the sunkensailboat you know.
Off to the right, on the on thebottom left, you can also see
the mass sticking up and itcreates a shadow.

(01:23:09):
You see that horizontal grayline on the on the bottom right.
That's the shadow, the sonarshadow of the mast.
But it sort of shows you.
Okay, this is what's below youand this is off to the side, and
that off to the side one'sreally cool.
If you're going through like anarrow channel or something, you
can literally see where you arein between, like the channel as
you go down it, and then thetop right.

(01:23:29):
That's trying to, that's tryingto show you kind of what they
call the 3d image.
So it combines the down visionwith the side vision and shows
you a composite image of whatthe whole thing looks like it's
like a cartoon it looks.
It looks kind of cute, it's it.
It works better in theory thanI've ever found at work in
practice.
Um, I just, I just cannot getit to work.
So I have mine set up where ifI'm in shallow water I'll

(01:23:51):
essentially just have my leftscreen on the chart and the
right screen on the bottom thatbasically down view on the
bottom left and it worksbeautifully Like I've navigated
thousands of miles in theBahamas just using, basically
just seeing cause on the BahBahamas.
A lot of times it's like 10feet deep and I just love to
look down and just see wherethat is.
And the other thing too it alsoserves as a backup bottom

(01:24:14):
sounder, basically depth orfathometer.
So I've got the main fathometerthat came with the boat that
also does the speed through thewater, but then this one kind of
serves as a backup to that aswell.
But it's just really neat tosee and you can also tell the
type of bottom you're over ifit's sand, grass, rock just
based on the quality of thereturn that you see on the
bottom.

So that's kind of pretty cool.
That's that would be handy.

That's super handy because you'll have a
different, you know, sort ofanchoring strategy a little bit
if it's sand versus like grasslike turtle grass doesn't hold
it all Right.
So that at least kind of letsyou know what you're, what
you're going into.
So, um, but that's pretty muchit.
That's like everything I haveon my little boat and, like I
said, I sort of looked atsomething from an engineering
perspective and a backupperspective, because on the

(01:24:57):
submarine everything was aboutlike redundancy and high
reliability and maximumefficiency, and if you're
underwater by yourself andsomething bad happens, you want
to make sure that there's a waythat you can, like you have some
kind of backup for everycritical system well, I wish you
were.

Um, I wish you were here because I have some
questions to ask you.
Because I installed and thisthis is uh technical stuff.
You know, when I got the boatit was raymarine and I didn't
like the raymarine uh chartplotter, it was not in this as
intuitive.
So I got my chart plotter, mygarment, and put it on my on
this boat and had the uh nema2000 installed so it's got both

(01:25:33):
and everything works, uh, but Inever saw the air temperature or
the water temperature everagain after I brought it to the
new boat, and I don't know whatthat's about.
Nobody seems to be able to tellme, but I used to use that a
lot and I have been without itsince I got the boat after my
hurricane incident in 2020 and,uh, I mean it's.

It doesn't garmin read raymarine um, a lot of
times, yeah, so raymarine's not,they're, they're not dumb.
They'll make a bottomtransducer or they'll make a
wind speed indicator orsomething like that, knowing

(01:26:19):
that they would rather have youjust buy the Raymarine piece and
use it on a BNG or a Garminthan have to have you have all
Raymarine stuff to use it byitself.
They might get some people whoconvert everything, but I think
they're smart enough to knowthis should be plug and play,
and so they try to plug and playit.
And the common sort ofclearinghouse, if you will, of
that is the NMEA 2000 network.
And so I would be surprised ifyou have a Ray Marine, basically

(01:26:43):
instrument that's providingthat information or that used to
provide that informationinformation it's still going
across your NMEA 2000 network.
We'll just need to worktogether to figure out like how
to, um, how do we access that?

yeah, yeah, because, because I don't even
know where it's reading from.
I never knew it on the old boat, it was just always there yep,
I never even thought about usingthe same transducers um there's
probably a good chance that.
Yeah, the transducers that camewith the boat.

Yeah, and if you were getting that information
previously, there's a goodchance that it still is there.
I bet you what we'll have to do, and I'm happy to work with you
offline because on my chartplotter I've sort of figured out
the most efficient or themaximum information with the
least amount of clutter for eachone of the viewpoints, the
settings, so like I have speedover ground, apparent wind speed

(01:27:28):
, depth and battery voltage.
Those are like the four key,like principal statistics that I
want to know at all times.
So, but the point is is that Ipicked those and I told my
screen like where to show up onit.
Sure, so I'm sure there'sprobably a way to configure
yours, um, so that we can see,like, the air temperature and
the water.

I've been through it and I have not been able to
pick it up.
But, um, I need someone else toand maybe garmin can help.
I don't know, but I justinstalled a new uh, garmin
autopilot.
It was an auto helm, which israymarine, know so that one was
starting to act up, so I justwent ahead.

(01:28:08):
I told the guys that work on myboat.
I said I want to be able to.
I want a remote for my, for myautopilot, and I've never been
able to route it through thechart plotter you know, like,
set it and have it follow it.
I've always made adjustments,you know, and I've gone from
here to the keys every yearsince, and it works.

(01:28:30):
I mean, it's just more of aluxury thing that you you know.
Uh, it works.
If you just make adjustments,it stays on course pretty well,
especially now that I have a newone but it has a remote, so I
can sit at the front of the boatoh, that's so cool.

Yeah, one thing I love about.
So originally when I got myboat, I didn't really like that.
It had one main chart plotterthat kind of had a swivel on it.
I felt that was, you know, likeI don't know rarity, had a nine
and nine inch chart plotter ateach helm station.
Uh, my last boat that was likeso beautiful, um, but I missed
that.

I've got this big one yeah, you get used to things
just like the air and water.

I mean, do I?

have to have that?
Probably not, but I, once youhave it, you want it again.

So this is, this is the funny thing, though,
about, about like having that,that the one pod that I can kind
of swivel around, originallylike on rarity, if I was
sleeping, and I was sleeping upon the in the cockpit, just
lying down on one of the, the.
You just turn it around to you Iwould have to get up, walk back
to the the chart plotter, lookat it and then walk back and go
to try to go to sleep again.

(01:29:31):
But so it was like it wouldwake you up every time you
wanted to go check on something.
But with cerilla I just anglethat pod 90 degrees off to the
side.
I'll wake up every like 20minutes.
Look over, check the radar,make sure it's clear over.
Check the radar, make sure it'sclear, you know.
Check the wind to make sure ithasn't shifted, and then just
like right back to sleep.

Yeah, and if you have active captain you can have
it on your phone and lay downand just look at it.

So don't laugh.
So I have that.
So that's the one.
The thing I do like about theone of the maybe BNG, I'm sure
it has this too.
There's a Ray rain marine appand you can basically connect
your wi-fi and because it's rainmarine, it's basically it only
works half the time, but I canconnect my iPad to my chart
plotter and control the chartplotter from down below.
So if it starts raining, I justbring up my iPad, hook it up to
the chart plotter, go downbelow and, especially if there's
like a squall coming through orsomething where the wind's
shifting like this, I'll justadjust the course or put it in

(01:30:30):
wind vane mode or whatever.

Um, so I don't have to mess with it and and
just control the boat down below, yeah, and then once I have the
because I still don't have itall hooked up, uh, because you
know what I've been, what's beengoing on in my life so I've
kind of abandoned the boat for alittle while.
So I'm trying to get myselfback on it.
But, um, I've got to get the,the new garment autopilot all

(01:30:55):
set up and and working correctlywith uh and it cleared out some
other settings.
So last time I took it out, Ino longer saw.
No longer saw.
Not only do I not see the airtemperature and the water
temperature, but also didn't seethe depth or the oh, that's a
problem and and it's therebecause it's on the one of the
relay instruments.

(01:31:17):
It's there, but I think becausethey were messing with the the
nema, it just it needs to bereset.

I'm a chart plotter.
Yeah, depth and apparent windspeed are my two most important
things.

Yeah, wind speed, and so I no longer have wind
speed or depth but it's there, Ijust have to we'll figure it
out.

I'm happy to help you, you know, offline and uh
walk through it or something.
I'm sure.
Okay, there's a way to make ithappen well gosh, we've had a
very good informative podcasthere.

Sure do appreciate , appreciate your expertise
thank you for having me on.
I really appreciate it well,we'll have to catch up.
When are you going back to theboat?

I'm flying in probably.
Let's see.
I'll have my this weekend.
I'm off, I just got back fromthe boat, so I'm staying in town
for a week, if you can believeit, and then next weekend I'll
have my kids, but the weekendafter so I think like May 19th
or so probably fly out.

So you'll go down, I'm going to take?

yeah, I'll fly into St Martin, pick up my boat
from the mooring and then justsail it down to Grenada where
I'm going to try to keep it.
But I have some friends that Ithink are in will be in
Martinique at that point, whichworks out really well, because
one of the things I want tovisit is I need to go to Antigua
to see Nelson's Dockyard.
That's one of the historicalsites there that I've always

(01:32:31):
wanted to see.
And then, but I want to go toMartinique and I want to go to
Montserrat, which where thevolcano erupted and buried the
capital city that's beendescribed as a modern day
Pompeii.
I really want to see that, seeif I get a tour of the exclusion
zone.
And then I want to head down toMartinique, where this island is
called Diamond Rock and it'svery famous well amongst sailors

(01:32:54):
because the British actuallytook it over to blockade the
French in like 1800, and theyset up cannons on this like
600-foot-tall like island andjust stymied the french for like
a couple years and they had agarrison of like 30 people on it
and the french had to send like3 000 sailors to like take it

(01:33:17):
back.
It was.
It was unbelievable, and theonly reason they surrendered was
because their cistern, the, thewater tank that they had on the
island like started leaking andthey all started dying of, uh,
dehydration.
Like how cool would it be tolike see that you know in real
life?
yeah anyway, but I'm gonna hit,I'm gonna try to hit those
places on the way down to uh, togrenada all right.

(01:33:38):
Well, and so did you see haydenand radine while you're in
saint martin no, sadly I missedthem, but um, I think they over
in Antigua by the time.

I finally like okay, sad self over there well,
they're gonna be back now thatthey're home and settled in
there, we're gonna we're gonnado another, another really good
podcast.
They, like I said, they comevery organized and they come
with tons of information and Iappreciate this today that you
really came with some greatinformation and some knowledge
and some some know-how.

So thank you oh, thank you for having me on.

It's been an honor , all right so when you get to
grenada or martinique, it'd befun to have you on again.

You can talk about your, about your journey
from, from saint martin for sure, and hopefully this time will
be easier, because I'll be goingstraight south as opposed to,
you know, against the trade.
So so we'll see how that works,for sure, all right, yes,
definitely.
Well, we can talk about bottompaint.
That's the next thing I need tolike, okay okay, all right.

Well, thank you.
And the way I end these is saysalty abandoned out.
Oh, you know, thank you.

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

Dateline NBC

Stuff You Should Know

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Salty Podcast #60 ⛵One Sailor’s Jeanneau 419 Upgrades🔧

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}On Purpose with Jay Shetty

Dateline NBC

Stuff You Should Know

All Episodes

Salty Podcast #60 ⛵One Sailor’s Jeanneau 419 Upgrades🔧

On Purpose with Jay Shetty