Getting Closer

Yesterday (Friday) was a long day. A friend at the marina had arranged for a fuel truck delivery around 0800 on Friday, and I had pre-positioned Sanderling at the fuel dock the previous afternoon (Thursday); my friend was going to bring his boat over and tie up behind me on Friday morning - early.

I arrived at Sanderling before 0700 in order to help my friend, and by 0730 his boat was tied up at the dock behind Sanderling. Then we waited for the fuel truck - and waited - and waited. We had several phone calls during the day from the owner of the fuel company, apologizing for the delay - he was short of drivers. Finally, about 1730 the truck and driver showed up and we were able to take on fuel.

Sanderling only held 150 gallons of diesel; I had anticipated around 200 gallons based on the number of hours the engine had operated since we filled up last May. Excluding the fact that the generator had run about 25 hours during that period of time, that means that we burned about 1.7 gallons per hour - much better than I had anticipated. If the generator burns even 0.5 gallons per hour (I'll have to check on that today), that would mean the main engine burned about 1.5 gallons per hour!

Not all the waiting time was lost. The outboard engine had been serviced and was ready for pickup, so I brought it aboard (will get it onto the Zodiac today), and I took the two propane tanks to be topped-off.

On Wednesday we held "fast cruise" for a 24 hour period. This involves pretending that Sanderling is actually underway - in this case, we pretended that we were anchored and operating solely from internal electrical sources. I actually spent the night aboard (Judy was out of town visiting her mother in Kansas) in order to make it more realistic. We "anchored" at 1715, and through the evening I cooked dinner using the microwave (left overs), watched TV for half an hour (the evening news), read until about 2200, and fixed coffee and toast for breakfast. During the evening I had several lights, the GPS, a VHF radio and the AM/FM/CD stereo operating. I even flushed the heads several times (the Lectrasan consumes 12 volt electricity for about 2 minutes while it is cycling). The refrigerator was operating the whole time. During the 24 hour period we consumed 215 amps of the roughly 500 amps that are available through the inverter. That means that we can anchor out for about two days without running the generator to recharge the batteries.

We're almost ready to cast off.