Nearly Complete

When our new inverter arrives, any day now of course, GANNET2 will be ready for the road complete with 540 amps of Victron Lithium, 220 volt and 110 volt shore power charging, engine charging via a 50amp DC to DC charger from our starting battery, cabin heat from our new gasoline cabin heater and repaired carpentry projects that were annoying but not fatal.

Adrián polished off his superb work with a clean up of our home. He vacuumed the interior and washed the exterior and parked our home next to our rented cottage which at $20 a day is cheaper than driving with gas at $8:24 a gallon. A pretty sweet situation. 

We’re likely to be here another week we figure, not because of Adrián as he can install the inverter in an hour when it arrives, but the question is: when will it arrive? It’s a $3,000 item and we said we’d pay for it when they have it in hand. I figure the importers at TerraVentura want their money so I figure we will get word as soon as they have it.   

It’s expensive as it had to be special ordered as most inverters here are 220 volts but GANNET2 operates household appliances  on board at 110 volts: the induction cooker, the microwave, the charging outlets, our heavy duty fans, the air fryer and Starlink are all designed for the US market.

We could convert Starlink to 24 volts  but Layne is reluctant to add $600 to our already enormous bill and it works very well on 110 volts through our inverter. We really like having our big old second generation dish firmly planted on the roof of GANNET2. However we had to deal with an issue which was not technical but billing. 

Since we landed in Colombia in February 2024 we have been using residential roam service based on our Airbnb address in Cartagena. The cost was $60 a month which soon went up to $80 then last year went to $115 paid in Colombian pesos through our credit card: easy. (Maria-Jose, Adrián’s girlfriend and her inevitable maté:)

Starlink has a rule for residential roam and that is you only get two months outside your home country. And they require you remain at a new address for at least three months before you can do another address change which would only last for two months... Anyway they caught up to us, I suspect because we used Starlink while in motion. So we decided to go to global roam which allows you to move and use Starlink on land or water anywhere in the world. The catch is  it’s more expensive, $500 if based in South American countries but only (“only”) $250 if based in the US. So we bit the bullet and made the change rather than lose service altogether.

I always knew prices would go up as Starlink is a monopoly but it is an amazing service. Sometimes people tell us they enjoy being out of touch on vacation but we aren’t on vacation and we aren’t terribly interested in hermitage in our van. Nor are you if you are reading this, let’s face it. If Google ever offers satellite service I will be sure to look into it. 

Stay in school, work long and hard  and pay your Social Security contributions to get a decent pension as prices will only go up as you age. Thats a pro tip in case you need it. You might not like living cheap and saving money in a van in old age and a pension comes in handy when you are an unemployable curmudgeon… Which leads me to Claudia and Norbert from Zurich in Switzerland, retired and driving the world for the past 13 years.

They have driven across Russia to China and back through Mongolia on the Silk Road to Turkey then through Africa to South Africa and started on South America last year. They are on their way to Venezuela through the Guyanas so we told them what we encountered there driving our modest two wheel drive delivery van. They’ll probably do fine in their six wheel drive high clearance Mercedes powerhouse.

They stopped by to have Adrián refurbish their portable generator. They use it to run their roof top air conditioning in their giant 6 wheel drive Mercedes van and they know they’ll need it in the equatorial Amazon. 

Then we all had a barbecue. 

We didn’t eat the cat but Rusty was sleeping and happily didn’t notice me fondling it. 

Adrián the Argentine took to the grill in best local style and cooked beef, pork, lamb and chicken. Just a mere snack to get us through a cold Saturday afternoon.

We had a weird but delicious boiled egg cheese and rice salad (above) with a more conventional carrot salad and Layne produced a couscous feta and tomato salad which tasted exotic to the locals. And there was a cheese fondue. 

I asked Adrián how it was to be an outsider coming to this country and he said if you want to work you can get ahead but Uruguayans whom he views as lazy, get annoyed if incomers are too successful. He plans to be very successful, our ambitious and capable Adrián. Coffee revived us momentarily but a long nap was indicated.

Claudia and Norbert looking unusually serious. 

Maria-Jose and Adrián’s gardener a Peruvian called Hoger. We reminisced with him about Peru and its food.

Your maté kit, bitter chopped grasses mashed in the cup with hot water from the thermos to top it up from time to time.  Wussies add sugar, locals don’t. It’s disgusting stuff. 

Argentines and Uruguayans will haul maté around with them everywhere. You know you’re entering Argentina when the customs counter has a maté cup and straw sitting on it. Everyone in Argentine offices across the country  suck from the same straw from their shared maté cup. I told you it’s disgusting. But cultural.  

Pitmaster.  

Stray cat found a home when pregnant. The litter found new homes and mom got fixed.

Rusty does not frighten her. Much. 

String coffee with Swiss Toblerone for dessert. 

Then the Swiss had to go so they did.

Monster Mercedes Truck. If we meet them again we will recognize them. 

The master of his domain:

I can’t wait to test out our new systems. Living aboard should be a well electrified experience. 

Our Victron Promaster

 Works progresses on GANNET2 and we seem to have found the cause of the problem that burned out our 110 volt battery charger. The shore power plug had crossed wires. Probably they got crossed in Brasilia and luckily Adrián checks everything.

The 110 volter inverter and charger is supposed to be in Uruguay tomorrow and Adrián is ready to install it as soon as it arrives next week. Meanwhile he is preparing to install a 220 volt plug to charge in countries that use that voltage. He inspected our 110 volt plug, the one that’s dangling above and found the crossed wires that burned out our original charger.

The 220 volt charger is the first box and it was tested yesterday: it works.

Then there is the solar charger box and the panels put out full amperage into 50 in strong winter sun. The engine charger has been dropping amperage as it warms up and Adrián is planning to move it to a separate bus bar  to fix that. 

We have a heater that ran perfectly for two hours as a test run.  There are some other jobs to do including some carpentry work.  

The parts cost is around $12,000 which digs deep. Especially as some of it is fixing mistakes made in Brasilia. But now we have a system including new batteries that could last the rest of our lives and with air conditioning heat and powerful solar panels we have a home that will be very livable. 

Adrián is looking into our rain leaks that typically wet the engine on Promasters. He may even fix them knowing him. He cleaned the engine too and got rid of our red Amazon dust.

Victron is all blue: 

Our new Victron 180 batteries, three of them faking  up so little space. 

And it’s all monitored on the phone of the owner. Amazing.

Cabin Heat

This industrial photograph shows the top of the 24 gallon fuel tank which sits between the seats in the Promaster. 

The two kilowatt heater uses three amps of electricity and sips gasoline from the main tank and blows heat which we have missed from time to time in the Andes, in windy Patagonia  and on the cool foggy Pacific coast of Chile.  

It was installed yesterday by Adrián with its switch mounted in the sidewall next to the passenger seat. This is where Layne sits when we are in the van and she will control its seven levels of heat blowing on her feet. The fuel pump cover being screwed down  after the heater installation:

Our only source of heat other than the cabin blower off the engine was a space heater we plugged in to our 110 bolt system and it helped at vast cost in electricity, something like 60 amps. 

The advantages of this heater are that it gives us comfort in a wider range of temperatures (and we are from the Florida Keys), gasoline burns at high altitude where diesel heaters choke, it produces no soot and it uses the same fuel as the engine do we don’t have to carry a diesel tank around with us  

It comes with an optional long hose to direct the heat but we don’t be using that. Our van is well insulated and this single outlet will be fine to keep us warm on cold days and evenings. 

Adrián had to remove the heavy passenger seat to get it out but he is nothing if not careful and precise. It all worked out. 

The solar panels are charging and the direct charge from the engine is producing 50 amps for the house batteries which is excellent as we now have no need to listen to the second alternator protesting with its squealing belt anymore.

Up next: installing the 220 volt shorepower plug and then we await the arrival of the new 110 volt 3,000 watt inverter which is supposed to be in Uruguay from California on Friday. Maybe. 

At The Shop

One more day waiting for GANNET2 to be ready for the next part of the road, but the work is moving right along. Our ever irritating second alternator is out after much grunting. 

It took time and effort but the accessory alternator supposed to charge our house batteries as we drive finally yielded to strength and came out.

Adrián suggested we lost more than a hundred pounds weight removing the alternator that rarely ran smoothly in five years of driving. 

Piles of heavy cable cane with it all replaced by one blue box, the smallest of the there below: 

Next to it are three 180 amp Victron batteries all three combined the sizes of one of our old 250 amp Go Power lithium batteries and we had two. 

Adrián the retired Argentine Air Force engineer is doing a great job of doing things right. I love the logic and simplicity of his installation . We are confident this will hold together for years to come. He likes things done right. We meanwhile keep our fingers crossed. 

Our neighbors and the road out front.  

A French Toyota Land Cruiser in storage. In Uruguay you can easily get permission to store your vehicle up to one year so lots of Europeans do that while they spend summer at home. 

Rusty living well.