Obeasts and Power Consumption on Sailboats: a Comparison Good morning FPH, some of you here may know that my long term goal in live is to be a liveabord sailor and cruise around the world. One of the things I've been researching recently is the power consumption of the electrical systems on boats, and there's an interesting parallel between maintaining a healthy electrical system onboard and maintaining a healthy body. First, lets start with the house battery bank. These are the batteries that supply all the 12v electricity (110v/220v if you have an inverter) to the boat that isn't the glow plugs in your engine. Obviously if you consume more power than they hold, the batteries die, but it's more than just needing to recharge them like your phone. Battery capacity on boats is measured in amp-hours. For example, a battery capacity of 100 amp-hours, can discharge 100 amps for 1 hour before it is completely depleted. However, depending on the type of battery, you can only use half of the total capacity before you start damaging the battery and reducing the total amount of times you can charge the battery before it is completely dead and you need to replace it. Similarly, obeasts overtax their hearts by forcing them to work beyond their normal capacity by pumping blood through all that extra tissue. Next, we move on to power runs. This is the wiring running from your house bank to all the devices and power outlets on the boat. If you don't have wire with a thick enough gauge, a lot of bad things can happen. Thinner wire creates more resistance, which can burn out the wire. This can cause something as minor as a loss of power to your device on the other end to as catastrophic as an electrical fire. The parallel here is plaque that collects in a fatty's blood vessels creating increased blood pressure, strokes, and heart attacks. Finally, we move on to power generation/conservation. There are several things you can do to help your boat's house bank last longer. You can increase the gauge of wiring on your power runs to decrease the resistance to your devices, increase the amount of batteries in the house bank for more capacity, or choose batteries that have a deeper depth of discharge that allows you to use more of a battery's total amp-hours. This is the human equivalent  to running more to increase overall cardiovascular health. You can also conserve your power resources by cutting down on the power usage, i.e. keeping your cabin lights off during the day, opening hatches for air flow rather than running your ac, etc. This is the equivalent of cutting calories to drop excess weight. You can also add solar panels or wind generators on your boat to help recharge your house bank to make up for the power lost from usage. The parallel here is working out to burn off the calories from eating that extra slice of pizza. Thanks for taking the time to read my rambling diatribe, I hope you found it interesting.  Tl:dr fats overconsumption has some similar parallels to overconsumption of power on a boat.