900 miles to Miami
Power conservation continues. When we realized that the wind generator did not work and disconnected it, we also realized that we had only been using one of the three batteries for weeks and making it work. Now we had all three and the solar panels seemed to be charging them for us to have all the power we would seemingly ever need. Drunk with power, so to speak, we blasted content (some of which still has not been posted). A week or so later it became clear that even charging the three batteries, we were loosing 5 to 10 amps per day in running all of our communication and science equipment at full tilt. All this new power had raised our minimum standard for what we wanted our equipment to be able to do. In choosing priorities, we are desperate to keep the science equipment running.
The biggest loss is personal computer time. Think of how good a mail call makes you feel… and take that away.
(Credit: CWF / Erinn J Hale Photography)
So we talk… every day… What can we charge? What can’t we charge? What is the priority… Water, always… How much science? How much communication? Its the same conversation every day. Same disagreements. It makes me want to crack heads sometimes, and I like these guys. We literally watch out for each other while we sleep. We cook for each other. We are a good team.
My frustration made me think of living in a world of 7 billion people. We will not agree with each other, and yet we live in a finite place and we are going to have to have conversations about conservation that we don’t want to have. There will be disagreements, hurt feelings and anger over these hard discussions.
On our boat we abused our resource of power, and now we talk about it every day, agreeing and disagreeing as a small group of humans. We conserve, and hope that a good plan, unity, and maybe some ingenuity will get us to Miami with all our goals intact.