Battery survey

We asked a group of voyagers about their vessel’s batteries and their future battery plans

What type of battery setup might make sense for your voyaging needs? We reached out to a selection of active liveaboard voyagers to get a sense of what they are using to power their vessels. Here are their answers to our survey questions.

Jon and Sue Hacking

Jon Hacking has lived aboard the Wauquiez Kronos 45 catamaran Ocelot with his wife and fellow voyager Sue since 2001. Their travels took them through the eastern and southern Caribbean, through Panama, across the Pacific, through Southeast Asia, and across the North Indian Ocean to South Africa in 2007. In 2009, they sailed back across the Indian and have been rattling around Southeast Asia ever since. They document their travels on their website (not a blog) at svOcelot.com, and their information for other cruisers is at svocelot.com/ Cruise_Info/cruising_info. htm.

Ocean Navigator: What type of batteries do you have installed on your boat (i.e., lead-acid flooded cell, gel cell, AGM, or Li-ion or other)? Jon Hacking: We started with gels but have now moved to lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO4). When we bought Ocelot in 2001, she had gel cell batteries but they were shot. So, we paid $500 for 660Ah (three 8D batteries) of “factory-second” gels. Apparently, they’d been on the factory floor too long to sell as new. These lasted well for us, but we replaced them seven years later in South Africa, having to pay $3,000 for 660Ah of top quality Sonnenschein gels.