Off the Grid

Roger here:
The New York Times on Christmas day had a front page story about a woman in Kenya who had traded a few goats to get money to buy a small solar panel. It permitted her to charge her cell phone, a process that used to be very expensive, including taking two days for two long motorbike round trips. The first trip was to drop off the phone to be charged and the second to go back another day to pick it up because the place was so busy charging cell phones. The solar panel also permitted her to light one electric bulb in the evening, by the light of which her kids were able to do their homework and thereby have hope for a future. In addition, she now charges cell phones for her neighbors and earns money.
We too are off the grid, and feeling good about it. In the past, despite the need to charge our refrigerators' cold plates by running the ship's diesel engine for an hour most every day, which also increased the juice in our ship's batteries, we were quite niggardly in our use of electricity which gradually tended to run down until we had to either run the engine more, or pull in to a dock for a charge of shore power. But no more. This summer we installed two eighty watt BP solar panels on a specially, and ingeniously, designed frame. They feed our batteries every day that the sun shines. For all of its faults, it appears that BP has been a leader in the solar power field and these panels are just the right size to fit and provide enough juice for us.
Special credit must go to our friend, master engineer and metal work impresario, Erwin Eibert, Past Commodore, the Harlem Yacht Club's secret resource. The problem was where to put the panels: They are big and there are not that many flat accessible spaces that are not used for other purposes and are not obscured by shade where they can go. One solution, which I had thought to use, was to mount them on top of the bimini, the canvas cover that provides shade to the cockpit. The problem was that this big piece of canvas is supported by relatively thin stainless steel tubes that are fastened at one side of the boat, loop up over the top and are attached on the other side. This contraption had come loose during the storm going to Newport in August and was neither strong nor trustworthy enough to serve as a mount for these panels. The next candidate location was the top of the radar arch which is atop the bimini. It is plenty strong enough but mounting two big panels so high and so far aft would have been just plain ugly.
Erwin's solution was a frame that draws rigidity from both tubes of the radar arch but slants down to just above the bimini. I hope the photo does justice to this device because 1000 words could not describe the ingenuity of this solution.
Another issue involves the precise location: they have to be centered so as to lay between the sides of the split back stay. They have to be forward enough to not obscure the helmperson's view, through the plastic window, of the wind indicator at the top of the mast. They have to be back far enough so as to not get whacked by the boom as it swings from side to side when we tack or jibe the boat. Our panels seem to be in the perfect position. Even the cats like them, hiding between the bimini and the bottom of the panels. Note the parallelograms on each side.
Another part of the system is a regulator that prevents the solar panels from overcharging the batteries. Too much of a good thing could cause the explosion of the acid-filled cells. Bob Fleno, who sailed the Hampton-Tortola run with me advised me where to mount this small panel and I've not regretted that location: I can get to look at it when needed but it is out of the way otherwise. Dennis, who sailed with Lene and me from NY to Hampton helped me snake the wire from the panels to the regulator through the radar arch tube and connect the wires. I did some of the connections myself. One regret is that I have not been able to actually measure how much electricity is flowing into the batteries at any given moment but thwarted curiosity is of little moment. The good news is that the panels are producing enough.... though not enough for the megayachts pictured above. One we witnessed coming through the bridge on the Dutch side which opens just three times a day. This one had the bridge opened 30 minutes after the bridge closed at a cost, we were told, of only $1800.00. The other picture is of 3 of about 50 of these behemoths already docked.
I no longer run around like a maniac turning off lights; we can also charge our cell phones and computer whenever we want and will still have enough left over to run the new Shop Vac for a few minutes every once and a while. Not enough to operate the refrigerator, the microwave or the air conditioner, though the fans can run all night if that's what it takes to make Lene happy. The plan was never to make that much electricity -- that would have required a diesel powered generator. And the panels provide enough juice to run the water maker for an hour or two each day.
So we do not have to bring ILENE to docks to get electricity, or water, but only to get diesel fuel. I think this will need to be a monthly trip unless I use the four 5-gal yellow diesel jerry cans to bring fuel to the boat by dink. My only reluctance to use the cans is that diesel fuel stinks so much and invariably a bit of it spills.
Speaking of water, I am reading Tony Horwitz' book, "Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before." It is a biography of sorts combined with the author's travels through the South Pacific, following in Cook's footsteps, or I suppose I should say following in his wake. The author draws a lot of analogies between Captain James Cook's voyage of discovery on the Endeavor and Captain James Kirk's voyage of discovery on the Starship Enterprise. But the point is that water was always a problem for Cook (much relieved by tons of beer and rum which they packed and drank excessively). But they did need water and a primary consideration was to find a source of fresh water when they arrived at an island. Then the men had to lower huge casks, many of them, one at a time, to the ship's boats, row ashore, fill the casks, row them back, hoist them aboard and stow them securely. Our watermaker relieves us of all this. Our Cruising Guides, which tell us where to find the things we might need in each port, based on the experiences of many who have sailed these waters before, do not mention water; the quest these days is for a source of internet service! We are not discovering new lands but only trying to discover truths about ourselves.