Imagine this, you’ve just spent a beautiful night on the boat, and you’re the only vessel in the most amazing anchorage… the only thing that seems to be missing is a freshly pressed cup of your dark organic espresso blend coffee.
Instead, you’re loading everything up into the dinghy to row ashore. When you landfall, you’ll need to light your camp stove (you brought a lighter, right?) and you wait for the water to boil, and by his time you’re asking yourself if you’re really going to enjoy that cup of coffee.
We seriously love our coffee in the morning, and its rare to ever that we do without. We needed a way to brew on the boat…
The best part of waking up…
Our plan was to install one of those cigarette lighter plugs on the boat so we could simply plug a coffee maker in and viola. So I stopped into the local boat store and picked up a 12v accessory outlet – $9 to keep the crew happy and looking forward to a blissful mornings brew – um, YES please! If you have been following us, you already know things never go the easy way… Why should we start now…
Could this be the answer to coffee on the boat?
Installing the plug really wasn’t too challenging, especially since I chose to read the directions first, and it helped that the unit only has two wires and an easy diagram on the backside of the package.
One of the easier boat projects, reading directions help!
We were ready for our next overnight. We bought a small 4 cup coffee maker from the drug store on our way to the boat. We were really looking forward to sipping a fresh cup of coffee in the cockpit the next morning. Being the victims of assumption in the past, we thought it would be best to make sure our new brewing system was working properly. Good thing we did!
Somewhere in the process, I failed to research what the load capacities of our inverter was. Apparently, not enough for a small coffee maker – we were snapping fuses, and cursing at the oversight. We just don’t feel comfortable lighting our camp stove in the galley, the idea of the something going terribly wrong just isn’t worth it.
Coffee Cups and Flip Flops!
Until we purchase the larger inverter, or decide we want to use the camp stove on or below deck (uh, no. not really) – I’ll be rowing the crew to shore to make coffee and have breakfast on the beach! How far would you row go to get your cup of joe?
We could not and would not go without my morning coffee. I am so glad that we have a stove on board. We have a Catalina 27 and I thought that we do without a lot. But no stove I think would be a deal breaker.We boil our water and then use to tall travel mug style french press. Love them.
Shawnae
s/v New Girl… on the dock!