Prequel

Since we've been remiss over the past few months in updating we will from time to time flash back to the events that got us to where we are.

The star of our story is our boat. For the past 2 months plus we have been working toward this time when we could move onto our boat. When we sold out in June we moved onto our previous boat an Island Packet 380 and now we are moving onto our Island Packet 420. Island Packet Yachts are made in Largo, Florida (between St Pete and Clearwater) by very skilled American craftsmen. In boats there are many classes, but Island Packets (IPs) are Class A Ocean rated boats that are designed to sail anywhere in the world. They aren't boats that you would take out to race around the buoys but if you want to race across an ocean they would do well.

We bought our IP420 back in August from a seller in Wisconsin. For most of its life it lived in fresh water in Lake Michigan so it doesn't have the corrosion experienced by boats in say Florida. The 420 is just under 45' at 44'7" with a beam (width) of 14'3" and weighs about 33,000 lbs. All Island Packets have 3 sails; a mainsail, a jib (head) sail and a staysail (second head sail).  One of the features of IP's unlike many other modern boats is that the interior is mostly teak like classic yachts. On the outside it has a teak rail around the edge of the deck and on the top of the coaming that surrounds the cockpit.

When we bought our current boat it had few features so as it was going to be our home for hopefully many years we added many upgrades, did repairs and enhanced existing features.

The boat had an HVAC system that provides heat and AC but it works like a heat pump using raw water instead of air for the heat exchange. However, since it requires about 20amps to function, it could only be used when connected to shore power at a dock. Since we are looking to reduce dependence on shore support we added a Northern Lights 5k diesel generator that can provide power to run the HVAC when not connected to shore. In addition to the diesel generator we added a D400 Wind Generator and 340 watts of solar power. With our wind and solar we should be able to keep our battery bank fully charged to more than meet our power needs every day without running our engine. While some folks would see this as being "green" it's an economic decision. Without the wind and solar we would probably need to run our engine at least 2 hrs/day. At 2hrs/day that's 60hrs/mo or about 500hrs/yr. At about $4/gal for diesel we have a 100% ROI in about 3 yrs. Not to mention the reduced inconvenience of running the engine. We also expanded the battery bank for 400 Amps to 600 Amps.

Additionally we added cabin fans, USB/DC chargers, TV, stereo, LED lights and an updated Garmin suite of navigation electronics. The boat also had no cockpit canvas so we added a spray shield, bimini top and full enclosures to keep the cockpit dry and more temperate regardless of the weather.

We also upgraded the sails with a new head sail, a new spinnaker and made repairs to the staysail and old oversized headsail.

It's getting late and the wind is howling outside as the temp is to drop into the 20's so time to wrap for tonight. More to follow.