Today we motor-sailed 36 nm to Palm Cay Marina, on the south side of New Providence Island. The big resorts and cruise ships are in Nassau on the north side. We hadn't planned to come to here at all but it made sense when we decided to replace our batteries in Marathon, FL. We have been wanting to add to the 330 amp hours we currently have for our house batteries. If we add batteries we have to replace the old ones, too. Since we are replacing them we decided to go with lithium batteries. Now, before you warn me that our boat will explodeI, I will say that marine lithium batteries are quite stable and safe. Lithium batteries are made with various chemical compositions. Some manufacturers choose a more volatile battery in order to gain performance. The lithium iron phosphate (LiFePo4) batteries we will purchase sacrifice some performance for stability. We spoke to someone who had purchased them from Seatek Marine in Marathon and highly recommended them. We plan to get 400 amp
hours of LiFePo4 batteries which will be equivalent to 800-1000 amp hours of our current AGM batteries. This is because we can only use a portion of the AGM's available amps but can use almost all of the Li battery amperage.
So, in order to make our way to Marathon we came to New Providence Island. We will be at Palm Cay Marina for 4 days to wait out a front, then visit the Berries (a group of islands in the Bahamas), then sail to the Florida Keys.
Comments
Post a Comment