Wendy gets Licensed!

When we decided to buy a boat and move aboard, Wendy and I divided up the things we needed to learn. Since I already knew plumbing, electrical and engines, I stuck with those and Wendy offered to learn emergency medicine, ham radio and Spanish. Emergency medicine was an obvious choice for Wendy; as a speech therapist she had worked in hospitals and nursing homes for years. She took an intensive three day course specifically designed for offshore cruisers and learned a lot of valuable information. The offer to learn ham radio was a big surprise; Wendy has never used our VHF radio and she doesn’t even like talking on the phone.

VHF radio is a common form of communication on the water, whether in lakes or along the coast, everyone communicates using VHF. Even now when everyone owns a cell phone, VHF is the first option on the water. While there are some rules that go with using a VHF, if you are only using the radio in the US there are no license requirements. That changes if you leave the country. Many people don’t know or maybe don’t care, but if you use a VHF outside of the US you need to be licensed by the FCC. The license is simple, just fill out an application and submit a small payment.

Ham radio is a little different. It does require a license to operate where ever you are. Once again, even with the popularity of cell phones, ham radio is very useful. Most areas have ham radio nets that can help with communications in case of disaster. For example, down here in FL, if a hurricane hits and an area loses power, all the cell phone communications will be down. A ham net can keep communications going by running their radios off of generators and helping to coordinate emergency efforts. Most counties around here have ham radio stations and regularly give the tests for people to get their licenses.

The reason ham radio or SSB radio is so popular with cruisers is the range. VHF is a line of sight transmission, meaning that at sea with an antennae at the top of your mast you may be able to transmit and receive about 50 miles. SSB uses much longer wavelength signals. These waves don’t pass through the upper atmosphere, instead they bounce off of the upper atmosphere and back down to earth. That allows transmissions to travel hundreds or thousands of miles. In some cases you can talk to people on the other side of the world. Another reason for their popularity is a modem can be connected to the radio and you can receive and transmit text emails. Unlike satellite, once you have the radio, modem and a license there is no extra change for usage. It’s not fast, but it is functional.

Our boat came with an SSB radio which allows us to communicate on ham frequencies, but neither of us were licensed. Wendy stepped in to take up the challenge of getting her ham license, so we didn’t just have a $5000 paper weight on our boat. It turned out to be more of a challenge than she realized.

To start, there is not just one license, but three. In the past, part of the test was learning how to use Morse code, but that requirement was dropped 10 or 15 years ago. Now you just need to learn some basic electronics, wave length vs frequency, frequencies you are allowed to use based on your license, antennae design, how weather and atmospheric conditions affect transmission, the regulations of transmitting and a bunch of other stuff. Then you can take the Technician test. After that you learn a lot more and you can take the General test. To gain access to the common frequencies used by cruisers you need the have at least a General license, so that was Wendy’s goal when she began.

As an electrical engineer, I would have had a big leg up on Wendy in studying for the exam, but I had no time and Wendy had plenty. As a speech therapist, this was like learning a new language for Wendy. She found a course online and started studying about an hour a day. The Technician license requires about 30 hours of study and the General, another 30 hours. It took Wendy about three months to get through all the material then some review and practice tests. 

The tests are available at random times and locations. You can look online to see when and where the next test will be given close to your location. Wendy found a test location that was about 30 minutes away that would be giving the exams shortly after she completed her studies. It was just a show up and take the exams arrangement, no need to let them know in advance. Wendy did contact them to see what she needed to bring with her; number 2 pencils, a basic calculator and the $15 fee. 

The tests are given all in a row and they grade them as soon as you finish. If you pass, you can take the next one. Wendy took the Technician and passed, so was allowed to take the General. She passed the General and was allowed to take the Extra which is the top level. She had not even looked at the material, but there is no additional cost so she went on and took the Extra exam. She didn’t pass. She did get her General license which was her original goal and a week later her call sign was assigned by the FCC (KM41FN) and we’ve added that to our boats license. 

The exam prepares you for everything you need to know to transmit and receive radio messages on the SSB, except how to use it. Now Wendy has a license and we have an SSB radio that is all set up and ready to go, we just need to figure out how to use the thing.

Test Sail

While last week was day after day of beautiful weather, the weekend is not. We had a storm system sitting on top of us, not moving at all. No working outside on Saturday, so it was a good day to catch up.

Last month we went out for a test sail and the sailing part of that went great. The boat did everything it was supposed to do. The sails are in great shape, the lines ran freely and the standing rigging stood strong. The problem we found was our electrical system was not up to the task of supporting live aboards. We have two sets of batteries – house batteries and engine starter batteries. Everything in the boat runs off the house batteries; water pumps, lights, refrigeration, fans, computers, tablets, phones and navigation equipment all run off the batteries. We have replaced almost every light on the boat with LED lights to reduce our power demand, but the house batteries still could not keep up. After that weekend, job #1 was beefing up our electrical system.

Here’s the math for our house batteries. We had four 225 amp hour 6V golf cart batteries. Two of these batteries in series make up one giant 225 amp hour 12V battery, so we basically had two big 12V batteries in parallel giving us a total of 450 amp hours at 12V. However, you need to be careful to not use too much of the battery’s charge. If you use over 50% it reduces the life of the batteries. That reduces our total usable capacity to 225 amp hours. Since we were just out for a weekend, the batteries were fully charged and we had access to the full 225 amp hours. When cruising the batteries rarely reach full charge; typically they only reach about 80%. That means that with a 450 amp hour battery bank you usually get about 135 amp hours of useful service from the batteries. Our refrigerator uses about 1 amp per hour or 24 amp hours per day. The pumps use about 5 amps, but they only run for about a minute at a time. LED lights use fractions of an amp. Compared to incandescent light using several amps that is a huge savings. Anyway, we should have had access to 225 amp hours and that should have been plenty, but the batteries were getting old and they could no longer hold that much charge.

The engine starter batteries. These are used for one thing and one things only and that is to start up our big, old diesel engine. There are two batteries that are just like car batteries. They are designed to deliver a lot of current for a short amount of time. They start the engine then get recharged from the alternator while the engine is running. Those batteries are doing well for now, so no need to change them out.

Anchored out for the night.

Our night out went well. Our new anchor held us in place, Wendy used our new stove to cook up a delicious meal, we ate dinner in the cockpit and watched dolphins swim around the boat. Everything electrical ran just fine. In the morning we could see that the battery voltage had dropped. That wasn’t good. We prepared to start the engine and while it did turn over, it turned over slow. It wasn’t able to start, so we switched from starter batteries to all batteries. That gave us a boost, but it was a cold morning (for FL) and the engine still didn’t catch. After a couple of tries the batteries quickly lost their charge, so we let them rest. We have solar panels and we had a sunny morning, so we let the panels slowly charge up the batteries. We also have a gas generator that we could use, but didn’t need to. After about 15 minutes the batteries had enough charge to try again and this time the engine started. That was a lot more trouble than it should have been and showed us that our batteries need replacing. After testing the batteries it appeared that our house batteries were weak and we used some of our engine batteries for house power. That weakened the engine batteries and made it more difficult to start the engine in the morning.

A truck battery might weigh 40 pounds, a small car battery only about 25 pounds. Our old house batteries weighed 65 pounds each. I had to pull each of those out and carry them off a floating boat while stepping over and around several obstacles. That was tough, but doable. When I went to buy the new batteries, the guy suggested larger 245 amp hour batteries. They had the same footprint as our old ones and were just ¾ inch taller with about 10% more storage capacity. That sounded like a good deal until I realized the batteries were 75 pounds each. It turns out that about 65 pounds is my limit for lifting something with one hand. 75 pounds required two hands. That made everything more difficult and it took a lot more effort to get the new batteries in than it took to get the old ones out. The next morning I felt like I had been hit by a car. Everything hurt. I need to add deadlifts to my workout routine.

New house batteries installed, we needed a way to keep them charged. If I wasn’t working, we probably wouldn’t have bothered, but with the energy demands of running a computer, phone and internet connection all day, every day, we decided to put in new solar panels. Our solar panels were only about 12 years old, but solar has changed a lot over that time. The new panels have twice the power for the same size and cost about half as much. Our old panels could produce as much as 230 watts in peak conditions, but replacing them with slightly smaller new panels we increased our charging capacity to 460 watts. That boils down to about 135 amp hours per day in peak conditions. That should be enough to keep the batteries charged. If we have a lot of cloudy days we can run the engine or use the gas generator. We want to install a wind generator, too. Unfortunately, that takes time that I don’t have, so it will have to wait.

We are working to get out of here in the next two weeks. The boat is nearly ready then we just need to get rid of a few more things, like some scuba equipment and our cars. We really want to get over to the Bahamas this month then work our way down to the Virgin Islands in April. Hopefully, my job doesn’t get in the way and in the next few weeks we can sail the boat over to where there is warm, blue water and white sand beaches.