Marsh Harbor Provisioning and Boatwork
Solar Panels Up and Running
Ok, spent the last 4 days anchored here at Marsh Harbor on Great Abaco island. We headed over here from Great Guana Cay to finish up on the solar and re-provision for our trip south. Marsh Harbor is the best place along our route to get hardware and cheaper groceries. We have been spending at least two more days here than planned due to very high wind, up to 30 knots, blowing during the last two days preventing us from using the dinghy. The good news is our anchor held firm.
Today I finally completed the solar panel project. What a saga this has been. We ordered the panels while we were still in Vero Beach. It took a week or two before the distributer received the panels and by that time we were on our run south, so we picked them up at the dock near the Ft. Pierce inlet. They are semi-flexible panels, so you don’t want to let them bend too far or the cells will crack. That gave us no end in headaches storing and moving them around on the boat for the last month.
I initially wanted to pay someone to install them but because we were moving over to the Bahamas, I ended up doing the install myself. I mentioned several posts ago that we had a canvass guy install velcro on our bimini for the panels and that worked out very well actually.
The final part was the wiring, which turned into a mini science fair project. I had to pick out the correct wire and connector sizes, figure out how to run the cabling and come up with some way of allowing the panels to be disconnected and removed for when we want to store them for whatever reason. There are some decent hardware stores here at Marsh Harbor, but no good marine supply store. SO, I had to get a bit innovative. A secondary problem is that we are anchored out from a dock, making it hard to “run in” for supplies, but it just took a bit more time. In the end it was a fun project for me.
The panels are up and producing power! I am considering myself an expert at solar panel installation at this point and I expect I saved us about $1000 on the installation. Now hopefully we won’t have to run our generator so much.
I also noticed our shortwave radio antenna wire was getting frayed where it connected to the backstay (which is the antenna) and so had to repair that as well. The backstay is the cable that runs from the top of the mast to the stern (back) of the boat. Trivial compared to the panels, however.
Soon to be headed south!
Posted in Sailing by Mark with comments disabled.