We had a somewhat lazy morning. When we got up is was cold and foggy., (about 68 degrees outside), and everything was wet. We had all the windows open and the condensation was dripping off the windows onto what ever was below it. It took until after noon for the fog to burn off. That is when Steve and Denny came over in their dinghy to get us to go to shore. We still had somewhat rough water as the wind had been blowing for a few days. It takes time for the seas to calm down. In any case, as we were getting into their dinghy, one thing led to another and I was in the water. I did not lose my hat, my glasses on my face or the reading ones in my pocket. My phone and wallet were in the dry bag, so there were unaffected. Just my pride was hurt, but yes once again, I was in the water.
Reneé was still on our boat and relatively dry, I was in the dinghy but soaked. We elected to use the side ladder and Reneé put it down, I got back on board and changed clothes while they ran into the beach to see how bad the surf was and getting into the river with the dock. By the time they were back I was ready and we tried again, this time I stayed relatively dry.
We went up the river. They have built a seawall here with three docks for pangas (the small boats that are everywhere in Mexico) we went to dock 1 and found a place to tie up then walked around town, looking for a place with WiFi. Finally down on the beach one of the servers said yes they did (I suspect that she was not supposed to say that) as the lady who took our order when we sat down said No, there is no WiFi, when we said but the other lady said you did, she went and got us the password.
After snacks, we headed back to the dinghy and back to our boats, but now the tide was really out and the river was really shallow we bumped a couple of times and finally made it out.
Once back on board we rested for a bit, then when the solar stopped putting current into the batteries, I started the engine and charged the batteries. It took about 2:45 minutes to go from 70% to 100% fully charged. This is the advantage of the Lithium batteries. The alternator has an external voltage regulator that protects the alternator from overheating, so it limits the output based on the temperature. At the beginning of the charge, we were putting about 102 amps into the batteries but shortly after that it settled down to around 60-70 amps. The alternator is rated at 110 amps, but it is not good to run it at full load. The lithium batteries take basically whatever we can push into them, the actual number is I believe 1/2C (capacity, which is 600 ah) so a maximum of about 300 amps. We have a 110 amp alternator, a 110 amp charger and a 60 amp solar charger (limited by only having 470 watts worth of panels, so about 40 amps max). So, theoretically, we could push a maximum of 260 amps. But the reality is everything is limited by temperature and as a result we typically only see about 60-70 amps from the charger or the alternator, and the solar is not performing at all well so typically a maximum of about 20 amps, so 150amps is normally the most we can do. We have seen as much as 190 amps at 98% state of charge on the batteries. So, this system really works. Most of the time.
We played a game of Qwirkle. Then I got caught up on the blog and Reneé read her book. Tomorrow is Easter, and Steve and Denny are coming over to watch an Easter service with us.
