We are getting ready for another trip down the east coast to the Bahamas for the winter. Had a lot of upgrades and maintenance projects on our sailboat this summer, which kept us from doing much sailing. I installed a new transmission from a different vendor than the original. Being a little larger it required moving the engine. That and a number of other maintenance projects on the engine took a number of weeks.
I also upgraded our fixed prop to an AutoProp, a unique prop that varies the blade pitch based on the load for maximum efficiency. We can maintain the same cruising speed at 400 RPM less than our fixed prop. Under sail the blades feather and we will gain ¾ of a knot in speed. We will supposedly get a 15% increase in fuel efficiency. Based on the cost of the AutoProp we should break even in about 100 years. The first prop they sent us was defective and they had to supply us another one. Unfortunately these props are made to order, so it took another month to manufacture a new one and send it from England, so our boat was not whole until early August, which made for a short sailing summer for us.
This was to be our new “Boat Card” from our favorite beach in the Bahamas, unfortunately the printed cards were way to dark to be useful. So for now, we will be using left over cards from the previous trip.
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