Another house raid

My lovely wife and I made one more trip to the dome home. This trip was mostly to raid the Oday for boaty bits: electrical odds and bobs, boat hook, snorkel gear, paddle, power cord with marina plug and a copy of Chapman Piloting & Seamanship.

Chapman's is the go to book on seamanship, the bible of boating. My lovely wife and I are mostly self taught sailors. Part of that learning process has been “daily readings from the Book of Chapman.” We pick a section of the book, often at random, and read it out loud. The book is a wealth if useful information and often used as a textbook for boating classes.

I was going to pull the old solar panel off the boat but came up with a better idea. While the little 30 watt panel provided good service it's a bit undersized for the Ranger 23. Thanks to a coupon and a Google payment for this blog, I was able to order a 100 watt panel with cables and charge controller. Thank you loyal readers!

There's room on the back rail to mount the panel. I've experience with the 105 watt panel mounted on the van so I've some idea what to expect. The boat mount should produce more power than the roof mounted van panel. The vans panel is flat mounted to the roof. The one on the boat will be installed so it can be tilted to better capture those elusive photons. Also reflected sunlight off the water gives a noticeable boost. That's why people get sunburns so easily while boating -and not just the melanin challenged either.

The boat has a new battery, so with the addition of a good solar panel we should have plenty of power for our needs. That will allow us to stay out on anchor longer, saving on marina bills. Now if I just add some fishing gear and decent rainwater catchment, we should be able to live on the water a long long time.

With our house raid complete, we locked up the doors for a few more months.

-Sixbears