Six army green boxes. They are compact and have a no nonsense look to them. Polished. Alert. They weigh about 130 lbs each.

The arrival of the Victron batteries represents the last item on an extensive list of refits. We have stopped shopping for spares, and supplies. With the new batteries, we are ready to leave for the Bahamas, pending an appropriate weather window.

The batteries also provide us with freedom from having to use our generator on a near-constant basis. Our generator operates in a hard-cased shell under Betty’s bed. The generator runs on diesel, which we’d prefer to conserve for motoring.

Below are some pictures that I took today, that hopefully, captured a sense of the excitement we felt.

First, Rick and Dave loaded the batteries into our dinghy and brought them out to our boat. This was no small feat. In the dinghy they were transporting almost 800 lbs of batteries.

The batteries were hoisted very carefully.

Here is a picture of our kids with the new batteries.

When the new batteries were in our saloon, it was time to remove the old Bosch car batteries. Here is a picture of Rick carrying one of the old batteries out the door.

With the old batteries removed, and no power on the boat, Dave and Rick worked quickly to install the new batteries.

Here they are installed.

We couldn’t have hoped for a smoother installation.