Power

Sometimes it's all about the power, in this case, electrical power on the boat.

Electrical power on AtLast will be provided by a "house bank" of batteries that CAI installed in the bilge of the boat in October.

AtLast will have a seven-battery system that will supply 12V DC. There will be one starter battery rated at 90 amp-hrs and six batteries in the house bank with a capacity of 600 amp-hrs. For comparison car battery capacity is typically 35-50 amp-hrs. All together our batteries should allow us to run our electrical devices for 2-3 days without recharging.

Our batteries are flooded lead acid, deep cycle golf cart batteries. Here's why....

• They are inexpensive
• They can be tipped without damage when the boat heels.
• They are available worldwide so we can easily replace them.

We will be careful to discharge our batteries only to 50% and then we will recharge them.  This extends the life of the batteries by 4x to 6x compared to if we discharged them all the way each time.  That's a HUGE difference.

Flashback to 2011: 

2011:  CAI is pointing down into the bilge where the future
location of our batteries, water and other storage will be. 
Notice the jackhammer. 
He removed the old bulky ballast and replaced it with lead to increase storage capacity.

September 2016:

October 2016:

Each pair of batteries is easily accessed by removing two screws in the lid.