No fridge means excellent battery levels: an unexpected silver lining
Losing both the fridge and freezer is a significant inconvenience, but Lauren Landers Sailing noticed one immediate benefit: her batteries are staying at nearly 100% because she is not drawing the large continuous load those appliances normally demand. She turns the inverter off every night anyway to give it a break, and without refrigeration pulling power around the clock, the battery bank just keeps topping off. It is a useful reminder that refrigeration is one of the biggest electrical loads on a cruising sailboat.
Go deeper with Lauren Landers Sailing
Ask anything about this, and Lauren Landers Sailing answers from everything they've shared.
More to learn
See everything in Learn
You cannot safely rewire solar panels while the sun is shining on them
Lauren noticed her boat was not bringing in as much power and traced it to a wiring problem with one of her solar panels. She also suspected that two of her older hard panels had gone bad. The core practical problem she ran into: you cannot
Running the engine to charge batteries and make water before departing Tahiti
Before leaving Tahiti, Lauren Landers Sailing wants the battery bank charged to 100% and held there long enough for the batteries to equalize properly. Once they are equalized, the plan is to run the watermaker. Because that sequence depend
Sometimes replacing the whole toilet assembly is faster than chasing seal failures
Lauren's aft head had seals replaced a couple of times and still was not working properly. Rather than continuing to chase individual seal failures, she decided to replace the entire assembly. The result: two out of three heads on the boat