IMG_4125(Spoiler alert: This gets a bit technical.)
If you go to Renaissance Island, you are welcomed by the tallest flamingo. Honestly, it can look you straight in the eye as it makes peculiar Kraak-Kraak noises while hanging around outside the kiosk selling flip-flops and T-shirts with “Aruba: One Happy Island”.
But then Renaissance Island is not for just anyone. The first time I went there, rowing over in the dinghy from Surfside Beach, a uniformed security guard caught me before I got anywhere near the flamingo and explained that this was a private island and, when I asked whether I could pay to visit, added that it would cost me $120.
But now I’ve got a Renaissance Resort wristband and can go whenever I like on one of the Flamingo Pink launches that run a shuttle service from the Renaissance Marina next to the Renaissance Hotel.
I am moored in the Renaissance Marina (right next to the Renaissance Casino) because at last I have found someone to instal my new Lithium batteries – and it has taken eleven days, so I thought I deserved a day on the beach and lunch at the the Papagayo Bar and Grill… and yes, I did have a Piňa Colada (I’ve discovered you can’t get a Bushwhacker anywhere outside the Virgin Islands).
But you’ll be wanting to know about the Lithium batteries. Lithium batteries are a hot topic in cruising circles. I did consider them two years ago during the Big Refit – but had already spent so much on sails and the watermaker and the “cooker for life” that I felt I had to call a halt somewhere. Besides, Lithium batteries catch fire don’t they?
This is where it’s going to get boring. That’s why I put the spoiler at the top (but there’s a mesmerising video at the end, if you can make it that far.)
The difference between the boat blowing up and being able to have all the lights on at once is the difference between Lithium-ion batteries, like you have in your mobile phone and Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries which just cooked my dinner and still have enough juice to run all the lights and both fans since it’s still 30° in the cabin with 74% humidity.
And all without blowing up, apparently.
I first tried getting Lithium batteries in Trinidad and then Sint Maarten but there were difficulties over deliveries and hurricanes. Eventually a firm in Curacao said: “Just turn up, we install them all the time. We’ll fit you in, no problem.
Four hundred miles later, it turned out they put solar panels on roofs (who told you we did boats?) There was a firm in Bonaire – but Bonaire meant going backwards … into the teeth of the tradewind.
That’s how I ended up in Aruba with Rob Fijn. Rob is a Dutchman (it’s a Dutch island) and he has a one-man electronics business called Solar4Me.
Normally, he works on big catamarans and 45footers with generators and dive compressors and space for this sort of thing. Nobody with a 32footer says they want 600amp hours of capacity (not counting the lead/acid for engine starting and the windlass).
They certainly don’t get a dreamy look in their eyes at the prospect of an induction hob.
It never ocurred to me that I could have an induction hob but you can have anything you like with a big enough inverter (2000W and its own fan).
Just think of it: No more trailing around gas depots with a 7kg Calor cylinder on your shoulder and then finding no one can fill it (they didn’t have a British connector on Aruba either.)
Admittedly, I am going to need 400W of solar panels to make the electricity in the first place and the welder who was going to build the frame for them cried off because of “personal problems”, so now I have to cover the 300 miles to Santa Marta in Colombia before I run out. The marina there says: “Yes, we can do that for you; do it all the time; got lots of people.”
Where have I heard that before?
Anyway, I threw out the extendable ladder that hasn’t extended since North Wales to make room in the cockpit locker for the trawler-sized master switch. The starter battery is in the tools locker – the big spanner now in the secret compartment of the forepeak where I always thought I might put the cocaine if I wasn’t so sure I’d get rumbled (I seem to have one of those faces which automatically assumes a guilty expression when confronted by figures of authority.)
All of which might have something to do with poor Rob having to sweat away in the cabin for eleven days while I sat in the air-conditioned Starbucks going through the frappachino menu and doing online Spanish lessons.
Rob admitted afterwards that he’d never installed a Lithium system on such a small boat (well, he did keep egging me on).
Meanwhile, you must excuse me, I have to go and check the “Time Since Last Full Charge” (121,711 seconds, apparently).
And here’s the video (who needs Netflix?): https://youtu.be/gdaVrJq3h4Q?si=tWpu7FXNcf9SBCiR
