What to do with old T-Shirts

The Hull of Ivy is painted in Interlux TopLaq. If I had time and the inclination I would go back strip off this one part paint and repaint in a harder two part paint, but there are a ton of things to do on her, and I think a job like that would end up on my list of things to do, somewhere around 140,233rd. A one part paint does have it's advantages as you can go back and easily touchup scratches and the like. Unfortunately I discovered my fenders really do a number on this paint, wearing away great big triangles. I have seen these fancy fender covers, and also noticed their price $40 a piece!

Doing my laundry last, I started the inevitable job of weeding out the grease, epoxy, bottom paint, [Fill in the blank], stained shirts to toss; and it occurred to me these would be great for protecting my fragile hull. Just pull the fender up through the bottom of the shirt, out one arm, back in the neck, and out the other arm. Works like a charm! Maybe not the prettiest solution, but heck I was just going to toss em anyway!

Portable DVD Player or Laptop

Ivy's electricity is mostly solar generated. I love it but it does tend to make you an amp counter. Recently I was on the hook for a few rainy overcast days so I had decided to stay close in, and watch some movies on my laptop. After a marathon of The Sopranos I went to check my voltage meter and I was down to 11.6v on my house bank.. Bad Randy! I had not really spent the time yet to investigate how much my laptop drew, and was floored to find it sucked 90 watts, that's 7.5 amps! I went online and discovered typical portable DVD players use about 1/10th that. Now this may seem like small potatoes, but with a house bank of 460Ah, leaving my laptop running two days straight is 360Ah, not even counting the loss of the inverter figured in.