One of the things about energy management aboard that had never occurred to me is that it's not just turning off light switches and being careful about leaving the fridge door open. It encompasses all that but also about how to best make use of the various power sources that you have at your disposal. For example, I had been running the generator during the early afternoon once the house bank got down to less than 24.5V and Barb was always bugging me about how that was losing 2-3 hours of the best solar isolation time when the sun is highest in the sky. Well today she was once again proven right. We ran the generator in the early morning before the sun got high enough in the sky to actually have an effect on the solar panels and got everything charged up and then the solar panels and wind generator were pretty much able to keep up with the usage throughout the day.

Snoozer was going to take us out to the reef for some snorkelling but the wind picked up and so did the sea state so instead we went to the sandbar with Peri to give him a run. When we arrived the bar was only just starting to be exposed by the tide and Peri gradually got used to shallow water. He even followed us through water that was too deep for him to wade in and he was forced to swim. This may not seem like much but for us this was HUGE! The fact that he intentionally walked into deep water and swam is a great step forward for him. Up to now whenever the water got up to his tummy he would back out and try to find some other way to got to where he wanted to go. We picked up a lot of interesting shells on the sandbar and surrounding waters and going to and from the site we saw several spotted rays - beautiful, graceful things.

When we got back to Snoozer's dock we found that the package from the Binnacle had arrived. Yippie! Now I know what I'll be doing tomorrow.