Travelling with a CPAP machine -- on a Locaboat barge?

Not an expert on CPAP, but I know a little about various types of electricity and plugs.

The battery you list, the 3rd picture down shows it has a charger with a north American 2-pin plug on it.
If you read the customer questions it says : "The Pilot-24 does not come with a power adapter sinse it is made to be used with the Airsense 10 or the S9 power adapter.".
Do you have such a power adaptor? If yes, what input voltage does it accept. If it says "110V 60Hz AC" it will not work with French electricity, if it says "110/230V 50/60 Hz AC". It will work with French electricity.

Questions you must ask:
1) Will it work with French electricity (as above)? If no, you need a voltage converter.
2) You WILL need a plug adapter, so the north American plug will fit in the "230 V socket in the saloon (quayside connection)"
3) This will almost certainly NOT work with the boat's 12V DC supply (this will be like a car cigarette lighter plug). How often will you be at the quayside connected to the shore power supply? If it is not often enough to keep your machine charged, you have a problem.

The current drawn by your machine will depend very much on whether you use a heated humidifier, which will significantly increase power consumption. For instance, my CPAP machine draws 1 amp on its own but 5 amps with the humidifier. This means I would need 40 amp hours per night. That's a lot!

If you can do without a humidifier for two weeks (perhaps possible if the ambient humidity is OK), this would make things easier for you and you might be able to get two nights' use out of one charge, depending on the capacity of the battery.

Talk to the boat company and ask what the 'house battery' capacity is. Each boat will have two or more - one for the engine and running lights, one or more for the 'house'. Then contact your machine's manufacturer and ask what you will need to run off that supply - probably just an adapter. If you can operate on a 1 amp current draw, or thereabouts, the average boat battery should cope just fine, especially if you run the motor for a reasonable time each day and/or recharge when moored and connected to mains. If you're in any way concerned, ask the boat hire people if they can equip the boat with a solar panel that charges the batteries - these are very common on boats and caravans these days.

Do you use a full face or nasal mask? If the latter, check out the new machines coming through that have a clever 'passive' humidifier system, which uses some sort of cartridge to 'recycle' the humidity in exhaled breath. They sound a bit pricey, being new, and the cartridges only last a month or so, but for travel and camping/boating, they sound ideal. They're also very small, perfect for packing light in your carry-on luggage. They don't work with full face masks though.

One last piece of advice, which you might already know. Many (most?) airlines consider a CPAP machine to be a medical aid and, as such, can be added to your carry-on luggage without penalty. Personally, I would NEVER put my machine in my checked luggage.

Thanks, steves_8 -

You are obviously a fellow CPAPer.

Currently :-) I have the humidity at 0, and the temperature at 18°C (64°F). That would still take a lot of current, would it?
At this point I've gone ahead and got the battery. I'll use the CPAP's own adapter. AND, I'm going to get a car cigarette-lighter adapter.

I plan to test-run two scenarios with the battery -- a night without the heated tube, and then a night with the heated tube, and see what happens. It is equipped with an alarm (!) that goes off when the battery runs out of juice, so I might try to run the "with" test during the day without actually attaching myself to the CPAP.

The battery people make an add-on that doubles battery capacity, for another $125 CAD.

Yes, I know about the airplane carry-on. Thanks. This battery will add significantly to its weight, though.

Notker.

Hi Notker!

Have you gone on your trip? I wish to tent a penichette in France next year, but with my cpap it seemed complicated. Can you be at quai every night?

Cathy

Hi, Cathy -
You have exactly hit the nail on the head!
I can't remember the exact numbers, but looking back, out of 14 nights, there were maybe two when we weren't on a quai with electricity. And those were early on when we didn't know what we were doing. So if you can survive a night or so without the CPAP, as I can, then you're all set. (More on this below.)
But - I'm getting ahead of myself. You can't actually ever plug in your CPAP on a penichette - unless you pack a 20-foot extension cord with a French adapter. The plug is in the kitchen/dining room beside the steering wheel, and you or your boat mates might trip on it in the middle of the night. I bought and brought a battery (approximately $400 Canadian on Amazon -- cheaper if you are in USA, and HEAVY). We were on a Locaboat 1120R - 35 feet long.
The routine I developed was to tie up at the quai, use my CPAP+battery that night. The next morning (I was the first one up - 6:30 AM), plug the battery in to get it recharged. Use it again the next night. Since the locks open at 9 AM, and we were usually only 30 minutes or less away from a lock, by the time we had to unplug from the quai, the battery was charged for the next night. In tests at home before I left, the battery seemed to take 4 hours to recharge. But it never too that long in the boat. Perhaps it wasn't fully depleted. It seemed to take only a couple of hours. It was never an issue. Remember, you have NO electricity in that outlet once you leave dry land.
About quais and batteries -- I'll assume you have never done the penichette thing. Forgive me if you already know this stuff. There's a VERY steep learning curve. The first few nights (we started May 21) are still a bit of a blur. Often the arrangement of boats that have arrived before you (think of parallel parking on a city street) leaves only what seems like a very small space and you won't be able to get your boat in there (think of parallel parking on a city street). BUT - you usually can. The people around will help bring you in and get you into tight spaces. So, in the first couple of days, we gave up too early and didn't dock beside an outlet.
I hope this answers your question. If you have any other questions about doing the penichette thing, don't hesitate to ask. If you can master the private messaging thing, I will give you my real email address. It was the very best holiday of my life. I would recommend at least halting French. We are already planning to do it again next summer.
Regards,
Notker