Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Milford City Landing - We get new batteries

Milford Landing has a large dock area that's mostly used on the weekend
The  batteries arrived at 10:30, three 4D Interstate Deep Cycle batteries and one starter battery for the main diesel. The old ones were four years old which is okay except that for the last two years we've used them 9 months out of 12, a lot of use for a battery. They are rated for 195 amp-hours per battery so with with three we have 585 amp-hours of capacity on board. To find out how long the battery bank will last, just divide the amp-hours (585) by the amp draw by the boat and the resultant number is the hours of use you'll get. So if I draw 20 amps watching TV and a few other things, then I would expect 29.25 hours of output  before they died. However, in reality you would never draw them down that much. The usual figure is no more than 25% without damage to the batteries so the revised usage would be 7.3 hrs at the 20 amp rate which is plenty for our usage. We maybe watch 2 hours of TV at most at night. The Interstate batteries were much heavier than the ones I had, about 15 lbs heavier - which is a good sign, more lead in the storage plates!

Rain, storm, wind - gotta get the jet ski on the trailer!
We had storms come through tonight, some wind and some rain but not too bad. We watched people retrieving boats and some waited too long to start - they were drenched! We had a front row seat off the back of our boat. We've become fans of Subway sandwiches. They have many less calories than other fast food outlets and the bread is always fresh. If you want a salad, they make it for you on the spot as you point out what you want in it from the bins in front of you. There's a Subway in Milford right up the street from the marina. We'll get two meals for $12 (we eat half of the two sandwiches, saving the other half for tomorrow). Our Mexican restaurant we had always liked was bought out and we didn't care for the replacement.

On Wednesday we're headed for Northport if the weather is right, otherwise it's Port Jefferson again, weather is king when you're on a boat.

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