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Melissa & Dave - Adventures at Sea

Check your emergency kits regularly!

Today’s big project to get the boat ready to leave was to finalize Dave’s boat monitoring system.  He had debated how to do this… Melissa bought a Claro stick and made it good for 4 months with enough data to do whatever Dave wanted.  He thought about writing software for his Arduino system which is a set of microprocessor and sensors.  Yes, he already had it aboard the boat, cuz you never know when MacGyver might need to code up some specialty system, right? Implemented that way would have allowed him to monitor battery voltage, cabin temperature, and bilge pump cycle count.  However, we didn’t really want to leave a computer running as the lithium batteries can burn up, and the laptop draws a lot of power.  So in the end, he decided on the high-tech/low-tech version and mounted a web camera pointed at the inverter phase panel and weather monitoring station.  The camera then uploads a photo every 30 minutes that Dave can monitor to his heart’s content.  Its just like he is standing in front of the panel!

Most of the deck gear is now stowed in the forward cabin.

One of the things on the list to do to get ready to go was for Melissa to clean out the front compartment in the dingy.  In there lives the spare props, tools for changing the props, water, some protein bars, dingy patch kit, flares/flare gun, and fire starter.  Everything had been sealed in zip lock bags and placed in there for safekeeping in case we ever got stranded in the dingy.  Alas when Melissa went to clean it out and store stuff for our time away she discovered that all the zip lock bags had been breached and there was a moldy rusty slimy mess of everything.  The flares were completely ruined along with the food and water supplies.  The props were moldy but cleaned up ok.  Two lessons here.  (1) Time for some pelican cases to store stuff, and (2) check your emergency supplies regularly!

Today after this morning’s rain the air cleared and we could see Panama City beneath the huge thunder bumpers.

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