The Power Struggle

Twenty-five years ago, on the original Turtlebones – a 44 foot mono-hull cruiser – almost everything was mechanical or manual. Electricity powered the lights and little else.  

Not so with modern boats. Now, electricity powers almost all our onboard systems and conveniences, and there are a good many. It’s not just the boat. Each of us, now live with and rely on a host of power-hungry little devices. With three people aboard, at least a half dozen chargers and USB cords are constantly at work feeding juice to everything from phones to drones.

Turtlebones came equipped with four sources of electrical power – solar panels, a hydro generator, alternators on the two main engines, and a dedicated diesel generator. Even so, keeping up with the ever-growing demand for power has proven to be an ongoing, and stressful, challenge. Think the ‘range anxiety’ of an electric car, but at sea, hundreds of miles from land.

This is because the diesel generator, which is designed to be the real workhorse of this setup, pumping out huge amounts of power whenever needed, has never worked reliably.  

To solve this problem, over the past year, we doubled our solar generating capacity and installed a huge new lithium battery bank. The hope being, to eliminate the need for our diesel generator to supply us with electricity.

To simulate how we’ll live during the next seven months at sea, Turtlebones has been unplugged from shore power for more than a month. Everything onboard has been powered via the battery bank, which is primarily fed by solar.

Over that time, we’ve carefully tracked and recorded how much power is being produced and consumed. The good news is we’re producing as much power we need – most of the time. The problem is, on cloudy days, production falls well below consumption, and for a variety of reasons on some days we use more power than normal. 

The data has brought some hard truths into focus. The big one being just how difficult is to replace the energy density and flexibility of diesel. This, in turn, has made us reassess our assumptions and rethink the options available.

While we could add another solar panel, which would give us 25% more power, doing so won’t solve the problem of cloudy days, or change the fact that while sailing the sails often cast shadows on the panels, rendering them virtually useless.

Two weeks ago, we reluctantly called in the experts to look at the old generator, knowing it was a long-shot to make it right.  The first guy who came wasn’t optimistic. But rather than give us the bad news straight-up, he ‘ghosted’ us for a week.

The verdict from the next guy, the jovial Jose-Luis, was “I can make it run, but it will never be reliable”. Twenty-three years in a harsh marine environment takes a heavy toll on machinery.  Particularly, machinery that isn’t used on a regular basis. 

That resulted in a search for a replacement generator. New ones are not available here in Mexico, they need to be imported from the US or elsewhere. So, we looked at a few ‘lightly used’ options. But most were too big to fit the space available. 

After a week, we reluctantly decided to call off the search and leave Mexico without a generator, knowing that we’d probably have to shut-down the freezer, which is already full of frozen food. And, that, in a pinch, we could make use of our small gasoline powered Honda generator.

So yesterday afternoon, I took our passports up to the marina office to begin the process of checking us out of Mexico for Tuesday morning. Immigration, customs, and the port captain all have a role to play and fees to collect. I also arranged for the local diver to give the bottom a good scrubbing to remove the barnacles and marine growth that build up quickly in these tropical waters.

Then Jose-Luis came by, we thought to get paid for removing the old generator. But no, he had three more options, two used and one new.  After much measuring and pouring over specs, we decided to buy a brand new 5.5 kilowatt generator. The dealer is promising one-week delivery from Florida, and Jose-Luis says he can install the new one in a few hours, once it arrives.

To be sure, this is a big-ticket item, and twice as expensive here in Mexico as in the US or Canada. But the peace of mind of knowing that we can generate as much power as we’ll ever need at the flip of a switch is simply priceless.

Once it’s installed and running, we’ll immediately check out of Mexico, and set sail for French Polynesia. But for now, were in wait mode, while enjoying the many pleasures of Mexico.