Electronic Goodies For Mexico

Cruisers traveling between Mexico and the USA resemble a line of ants carrying loads back and forth.  Those headed for the USA usually take outgoing mail, to be consigned to the safety of the US postal system.  Those returning to Mexico bring back all sorts of commodities, with replacement parts at the head of the list.  One man returned to Mexico from Oregon with a complete brand new engine for a friend of his.

My load will be more modest.  Most of the items above are 12V power supplies for computers.  They enable us to run our computers from the boat's 12V battery bank, something indispensable when at anchor or out at sea.  The charger at the far left is one that Bob found on the net for his Acer laptop.  The second one from the left is one that I purchased for the Acer netbook that I ordered (but did not get).  Both are dedicated to Acers: 19 volt output and one connector specific to that model of computer.

After my netbook purchase fell through (It was rejected because I had a foreign Visa card, which gave me time to reconsider the issue.) and I purchased the Toshiba, I went out on the Net looking for a 12V power supply for the new machine and found a real gem: the Merax power supply at the right.  We have confirmed using the cigarette lighter socket in Arnold's van that it does indeed support my new Toshiba (19V); but it is much more versatile than that, with its choices of 15, 16, 18, 19, 20, 22, 24 volts as well as a set of 14 different connectors.  But wait, there's more!   The unit has a USB connection for supplying 5V power to electronic devices, such as the 340 Gb external hard drive I have on in the boat.  The photo shows two Merax's.  The offer was one Merax for $26 or two for $40 (no tax or shippiing charge), and I can't resist a bargain - besides, I like redundancy in my life.

I've got two inverters in the boat - a 240V and a 110V.  They could be used for powering computers using their normal wall plug battery supplies.  However, it seems extremely inefficient to me to take 12 V power from the boat and invert it to AC, so that the computer's power supply pack can take the AC, rectify it back to DC, then transform it to the computer's voltage.  

The blue-black box contains a GPS antenna for Ib.  These are great little devices that receive GPS satellite signals from inside the cabin and put out NMEA data to a computer via a USB port.  I have found this useful for my computer-based C-Map chart plotter system as well as the modules of the Sailmail system that require knowledge of the boat's position.

At the far right is a 16 GB flash drive that I bought yesterday for about $30.

I've got one low tech item to find for a friend: a jar of  "Johnny's Seasoning Salt".