Category: Green Boating

Happy day! You may recall that I planned to put solar panels on Gizmo last summer, but in fact I didn’t know what to expect in terms of output or even if that output would support my Sea Frost refrigeration system. Well, wow, you’re looking at 17.3 amps of solar juice at around local apparent noon today, and I’m seeing 12 amps as I write this four hours later. And though I’ve been running all sorts of gear all day, and the refrigeration for two days, the battery bank is at 12.6v, which is a healthy number I rarely see unless I’ve just been out cruising. I’m thinking of having a cold beer to celebrate!…

About two months ago I received a Torqeedo Travel 1003 for long term testing, I’ve used it almost every day since, and, well, the title tells the story. I simply adore this electric outboard! Admittedly certain personal traits may be in play. Historically small gas outboards are a significant exception to my generally high success rate with mechanical boating issues; possibly related is my annoyance with the smell and noise of the damn things (and the hearing aids don’t help); and, finally, a faulty shoulder makes starting even a lawn mower somewhat painful. But then again I did not fall so hard for the original Travel 801 model that I tried in 2009…

So maybe this is an all-about-Gizmo week. Given her multitude of electronics partly described on Monday, and the fact that the boat rarely sees shore power, plus how helpful readers were in spec’n out the ChartTable21 discussed yesterday (and yet more strain on the 12v bank), I’m keen to add some solar panels and I again seek advice. Oh, and while Gizmo does have a 6 kW generator, I don’t like running it, and would enjoy removing it altogether. I created the drawing above (PDF here) in an effort to explain to a solar salesman in Arizona what I was up to, but I haven’t purchased anything yet…

Boat juice — the 12 volt kind — will be a big subject on Gizmo this season, and hence on Panbo. Designing and installing a solar panel system and experiments with various battery monitoring and distributed power technologies are all on the list, but step one is getting the Prestolite Leece-Neville 130 amp alternator that charges the main bank up to snuff. Last summer I needed help from Panbo readers to figure out that this alternator was actually working pretty well despite the large (and erroneous) amperage deficit shown on the Link 1000. But it began behaving badly toward the end of the season, sometimes refusing to charge, and besides I’d been persuaded that a more sophisticated regulator would be a good investment…