Since we had arrived at Marathon the wind had blown. Constantly. Hard. We asked people if it was always like this and they looked at us with this sad face. Then the wind stopped and we knew why. It was hot. Not warm, certainly not "it's a dry heat", but I can't focus on anything or do anything and I'm going to lose my mind hot.
When the wind was blowing our tarps were sending a constant blast of fresh air down below, and keeping the things in the sun, especially us, from feeling very hot at all. Once the wind stopped everything else did too.
Since we were not hooked up to shore power in the middle of the lagoon, the only way we could have air conditioning was to run the generator. Not very efficient, but could be worth it. It's considered bad form to have it running it all the time when your neighbors are not running generators, which was most of them. I started looking at slips in marinas.
Additional problem. Due to a peculiarity in how our boat is wired, the battery charger has no on switch. It comes on when the 120v power appears whether you like it or not. Those who know something about electricity should be assured that there is a big-ass fuse. I can also turn down the amp load on the charger.
In addition, our generator was just barely supporting the battery charger on full. Add something else to the load and it seemed to bring it down. More on this later. Since we were on a mooring our batteries were rarely full, and in fact seemed to be slowly winding down over the weeks. I think the recharge efficiency number being used is a little optimistic. In other words, if you take out 10 amp-hours of power, you need to put back 11 or so to make up for heat losses and such. OK, no one cares about this.
We have three maybe 6 inch fans but they were no replacement for a 15 knot wind. More fans would be nice, but the amp draw of a typical fan is surprisingly high. We found a high efficiency 12 inch fan. With a soaking on the sugar scoop barely acceptable.
I may have mentioned that Marathon is a small town. There is a movie theater, but it only shows one movie at one time each night. Except as we found out, on weekends there is a matinee at 2p, the hottest part of the day, as long as at least 8 people show up. There is actually a sign on the wall that says that. Into the Bob Narley taxi we went to sit in air conditioning for 3 hours. Didn't really care what they were showing, which was good because they were showing Pirates 39 or something. At least a couple dozen folks had the same idea.
After a few days the wind returned and we vowed to not bad mouth it again. I used to think, when I saw a picture like the one below of the harbor, oh how pretty. Now I think, it better not be over 80 degrees because there is not a breath of wind.
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