We live off the grid. That's not a very profound statement, we are not plugged into anything. Here is how we do it. This will digress into the technical analysis of what we use for energy on Uproar and how I set up the systems to work properly. Bottom line, it works! We live quite comfortably on our meager resources.

Our resources are the sun, propane for cooking, gas for the dinghy, sea water and diesel fuel. Electrical power comes mainly from our solar panels. We occasionally run the diesel when we have a few cloudy days or just after we defrost the freezer.

Propane

Our stove has three burners and an oven. We sometimes refill small propane bottles for the grill and will soon hook our large propane tanks directly to the grill. We have two propane bottles, 10 pounds each on Uproar. They together are equivalent to one standard tank used with a backyard gas grill. These two bottles last 3 months. Cost to refill one bottle varies from $12 to $20. How would you like a gas bill of only $9 to $15/month?

Gas for the dinghy

Our four stroke Merc 15 hp is pretty stingy on fuel as previously reported. We use it daily to get to shore and also use it quite a lot for exploration. Total usage is about 2 gallons/week or 8 gallons/month. Gas costs about $4/gallon in the tropics so that's under $32/month.

Diesel

Uproar has a 4 cylinder, 50 hp, Yanmar 4JH2E diesel engine. While we are fortunate enough to have a well performing sailboat, there are times when we need to use the “iron genoa.” We also use the diesel engine to generate electricity and make water. I'll elaborate on that later but looking at our records, we average 20 gallons of diesel/month. Diesel costs about $4/gallon here so that's about $80/month.

Water

We don't use any local resources for water. The Bahamas can be fairly dry and short of water. Most of the Caribbean has ample water. In the Bahamas some marinas charge $.40/gallon. We don't buy water, we make our own. Uproar has an engine-driven watermaker. We make around 30 gallons/hour when the engine is running. The watermaker uses so little energy that the engine doesn't even know it is running. But if you have a 12 volt watermaker, they use significant energy from your battery bank and their output is far less. I designed the electrical system on Uproar to go three days without running the engine. We use about 10 gallons/day with each of us taking a daily shower (mine is mostly in the ocean with fresh water rinse). We don't always need to run the engine every three days for electrical but sometimes just fire it up to make water. And that water is pure! We drink it right from our tanks. It tastes good and no one has had ill effects from it. We never buy bottled water but have saved a few of those plastic bottles for refilling when we hike, etc.

Watermakers can also be noisy. If you run a 12 volt one, it needs to run a long time and you hear it all day long. The diesel engine makes more noise than our engine-driven watermaker so we don't hear it. We also run it for only about an hour to 1 ½ hours, every three days. I strongly recommend installing this type of watermaker. Ours is sort of a DIY kit from Electromaax. Making the brackets to mount the pump can be challenging but the rest of the installation is quite easy. Cost is about $5000.

Electrical

We use the equivalent of burning a 60 watt light bulb 24 hours/day. That's all we use! That energy can be totally replaced on a sunny day by our 400 watts of solar panels. We have a Victron BVM 702 that monitors the input and output of our electrical system. I have met many cruisers with electrical problems on their boats. It is essential to have a monitoring system to know what is going on. The Victron works well and has advanced programming to match your battery bank.

Our battery bank consists of two Odyssey PC 1800, 220 amp hour, thin plate pure lead, AGM batteries. AGM batteries are maintenance free and don't outgas. Ours are tucked in the port side settee right next to food storage. They are only 4” thick but weigh 130 pounds each. Uproar was starboard-side heavy so mounting these on the port side helped balance the boat. These batteries were chosen because they have extremely low internal resistance. You can whack them with 200 amps of charge and they won't get hot or outgas. If you can charge them that fast, you won't need to run the engine very long.

To match the batteries, I installed a 180 amp alternator and the serpentine belt/pulley kit from Electromaax. A Balmar programmable voltage regulator or Electromaax's new system must be used with this large alternator. Output at high idle speed (1300 rpm) is only about 120 amps but that is a ton compared to a standard alternator that puts out about 30 amps at this speed. I have damaged the batteries some because I wasn't charging them at a high enough voltage the first year. Tech support from Odyssey and Balmar has been very good and now the system works well. But if I had gotten the settings on the voltage regulator correct in the first place, the batteries would still work like new. No need to replace them, they still have plenty of capacity for our needs.

We have a car size battery as a backup starting battery. I monitor this weekly and occasionally switch the solar over to give it a jolt. When running the engine, the alternator output shuts down the solar so this is a good time to switch the solar to the starting battery. We have had to use it 3 times in 1 ½ years but it is always there.

Costs for batteries are around $1400, alternator, pulley kit $1800, voltage regulator $700, Victron monitor $250, solar system and controller $1200, misc. cable and parts $300. Yup, we spent over $5000 for the electrical system but it works well and we can watch TV (just what we have recorded), charge computers, make ice in the freezer and enjoy a cold beverage any time. Lights are LEDs so use very little energy. Check Ebay out for bulbs. Marine stores wanted $14 each for the 25 bulbs I have on the interior. I bought them on Ebay for $.80 each and none have failed.

Uproar worked well when we first bought her. Lisa and I cruised for 3 weeks at a time quite comfortably before any of this equipment was installed. But living aboard full time is a different story. I would advise that anyone wanting to live aboard throw all of their electrical equipment overboard and buy items similar to the above. Nigel Calder, boat systems guru, said, “You can get your electrical system to work just like at home but it's going to cost you.” He was right but the benefit is a comfortable quality of life, off-the-grid.