Aboard Dignity (Lagoon 420) Blog

This is a subject of much concern for global travelers.  At one end of the extreme, maintaining our full US coverage is insanely expensive.  At the other end, ie not having any (sometimes called “self-insurance”) leaves us exposed to major financial expense should we have a serious medical problem sometime in the future.

Our general view is that medical care outside of the US is generally inexpensive so the “self-insurance” option works for minor issues.  This leaves a void with respect to major illness.  We’ve taken a look at many plans and feel that the Gold plan under the Global Medical Insurance offered by IMG is about right for us.  We reckon the option with the $1,000 deductable is just about right.

This plan requires us to be out of the US for 6 or more months per year.  That’s ok.  What’s good is that it covers us for up to 6 months each year within the US which makes this a bargain.

Although the fourth solar panel has yet to arrive we were able to successfully test the MPPT (which arrived yesterday) with the three panels we had.  We linked the MPPT to a spare batter and a small inverter/lamp for a load.  Click for pic. We were limited by the maximum fuse I could get in a hurry which was 20A. The MPPT can be programmed for a soft cut off so I set this for 17A as I didn’t want to blow the fuse to the battery.  Even though the sun didn’t come out perfectly and the panels were sloped away from the sun we did manage to trigger the auto cutoff.  That suggests we reached 200W.  Not bad for a basic test.

Three out of the four solar panels arrived today.  I was able to visually inspect them and verify they produce a voltage when pointed at a cloudy sky.  I’m hoping the remaining panel and the charge controller will arrived before the weekend so I can do a full end to end test.  This is will involve charging a spare battery I have at home.

This past weekend saw us buying up the tools needed to keep us on top of things on Dignity.  In many cases we already had older versions but just the one.  Having the right tools at hand can be a critical safety factor and given that the sea rarely hands back lost tools redundancy is not a bad thing.  My recent experiences aboard Windancer IV have certainly influence some of my purchases.  I bought plenty of heavy duty cable straps which played a key role on the rudder jury rig.  I also bought some large wrenches and a few other things that had to be borrowed.

This morning I successfull tested the Garmin 18HD radar.  The chartplotter and radar are now packed ready for storage.  I’ve also tested our old 7.5hp outboard prior to selling it on eBay.  Helen’s been busy packing away some of our old china.  She’s also progressing through the task of selling off a load of our old hardback books.  Still much of the weekend left and the story will be more selling / packing.  Slowly we are making our way.