Going Solar

To make the boat liveable without shore power, I just set the batteries in the companionway below and laid the solar panels on deck. The next step was to wire a controller between the panels and the batteries and connect the fridge. Yes we could live without the fridge, but its the principle of having toys and living the lifestyle we want to become accustomed to.

Simple enough, except the wires are too small, the panels are loose on the deck, the rig shadows the panels in the morning lessening the output, and the wires and batteries are scattered all over the boat.
Designed my own system to mount them off the stern, such that they can be articulated to keep the shadows off and not take up any deck space. The can also be pulled in over the deck and lashed down in severe weather.

 Had to go buy larger wire and wait for a dry day to drill holes, remove foam core from around them, filll with epoxy and let it set up. Too cold when I epoxied, it took a day for the epoxy to set up at 50 degrees as opposed to 30 minutes at 80 degrees in FL. Rained the next day so wait some more. Ran the new wires and mounted it all up next sunny day(Tues). So now this is what it all looks like.

Still have to move the batteries, but have got the system online with proper sized wires to minimize transmission loss and get all the sun has to offer. Sadly, you can see from the picture how much this is  on most days. We get enough to run the fridge on clowdy days, but not much else. This is actally very encouraging, because we have no intention of hanging our anywhere gloomy after this, and this seems to inidicate we will have plenty of power when we get some sun.

The certificate of deletion from canada came in this afternoons mail. We have to go over everything carefully and confirm with the coastguard that we have alll our ducks in a row, and we will send it all off. You can submit it electronically, but if there is a problem, they send out a letter of deficiency to notify you. Opened a fedex acct. so that they overnight it if that is the outcome, or send us our certificate of documentation. If you mess up the application, you must submit it again along with the $141 filing fee. Kinda makes you wonder if they get scored on the number of rejections and re-submissions.

Pulled the daggerboard up today to look over the process of making it easier to handle. It already has a block in the trunk to pull it down, and I intend to put plastic slickness(HMDE or similar) on the side of it so that there will be room to use a block to pull it up from the cockpit. This will also make it fit the case much more closely and not rattle around as much when motoring.

The daggerboard is pretty rough, poorly shaped with some cracks and obvious water damage. Without a shop, it will be very dificult to re-fair it and it is too heavy to move about by hand. I would guess it weighs more than 300# based on my ability to only lift one end with great effort. Perhaps a new one is in the offing if it is to be managed by our short handed crew. The daggerboard foil it the primary point of lateral resistance in this type of boat and a poorly shaped one is as bad as a really ratty sail when it comes to sailing performance.