Project - Solar Panels

What a Valentine Day - We received a box of parts and goodies from John Edward and our 3 solar panels from E Marine. All delivered to us at Cucumber Beach Marina near Belize City. We are so impressed with the ease of getting things shipped and cleared through Customs by Dylan and his company Belize Freight.

After much discussion of our power consumption, fuel cost, generator wear and tear  and the difficulty of getting fuel for Wahoo we found that the cost of Solar panels would be repaid in about a year. Sun light is free and free is good! Roy felt that 3 panels each generating 140 watts of electricity would help tremendously. The idea being to reduce the time we need to run the generator to keep things working while we are on the hook. Things like lights, fans, microwave, refrig, freezer, ice maker, computers,  and girlie tools all need power and that power needs to come from somewhere. We are rarely at a marina and plugged in to shore power so all of our power needs to be generated on board. The engine does some when we are motoring or motor sailing but other than that we've been depending on our 8kw Kohler genset.

The panels arrived and even I helped get them installed. One is now living on top of the dingy davits and two are on either side of the boom, on the Bimini top.