Actually it is a "Concrete" boat. That is why it would have made a good artificial reef if I had not saved it.
Only the rigging was wooden. You can see before and after pictures below.
Panels are set close hauled on a Port Track in the "after" pic. The rig may look a little gangly but being able to track the sun and have more panels than I do deck space gives me over twice as much energy to run on. I can make 4 mph real time off the sun and still be trickle charging the batteries on a nice day. The shade factor is very nice too.
When I originally got the boat I had no idea I would do this with it. That idea came later. It was a shame how time had ravaged the rigging because the original builder had done an unbelievable job and it made a gorgeous cutter rigged ketch in it's day. However with twin keels and only a 3' draft I doubt it went to weather very well and it would have cost a fortune to re-rig for sail again so I came up with solar idea for a fraction of the cost. It is very good canal cruiser now and an awesome gunk holer since I have more power than I know what to do with when I'm not moving. We frequently run the air conditioner with the windows open or the water heater in the morning so the batteries will not charge too fast. I'm breaking the array in half with another charge controller and battery bank this year to address this problem. Then I should have enough storage to run my air conditioner all night too without kicking in the generator.
The panels make a very nice sail when deployed on a broad reach and will give an extra knot in good wind. And they have surprisingly little effect, even in very high winds when the canopy is down.
Capt. Carter
www.shipofimagination.com
On Thursday, June 11, 2015 3:25 PM, "'cal' h20dragon@centurytel.net [electricboats]" <electricboats@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
Good for you for saving a wood boat, I lost a great boat when I sold it to a guy who did not understand wood maintenance. Got married, moved and couldn't take it to Oregon. Two years after sale in Marina del Rey, Ca., it was just not a yacht, new owner let it go to rot. One of the Mc Innes "Coaster" class #5, built in Costa Mesa for me in 1974. Sold through a broker, to a new boater !!! I raced in the wooden boat series, against Herishoff 28s. Soloed the islands and Newport, Ca. where I was a guest Of John Wayne on Wild goose. he saw me come in and waved me over for a bit, great guy.
Yeah, in reminiscing, also had hull #45 Cal 27, half ton cup racer, but never raced. Bought just six months before Windsong, and sold that fast to go for my beloved wood hull in '73. So, yes I can see the work and beauty in wood, fell in love with it on Peggy Slater (yacht broker) Kettenberg 45, and a PC class racer owned by a friend, the famous "Pirate", boating is a full time hobby, and love in one.
I guess that makes me a traditionalist, and many of the overblown plastic big bucks yachts leave me cold. likewise the Chlorox bottles seen in the marinas, lines all ahoo !, varnish and paint or jel coat peeling, looking like wrecks before their time. I have backed out of wood boat shows with mine this year, if not in proper show condition, they stay home. Busting it with painting etc., just cosmetics, but that is the way I roll. Read Arthur Bisers books, Michael Ruhlmans -Wooden Boats, maybe some Hiscock, Don street, or Wooden Boats mag. Some wood boats in those books were also saved, and good for them too.
I have a sign – "If God loved fiberglass boats, He would have planted fiberglass trees " – in my boat shop.
Many opinions, many choices, none are wrong for the owners ------ Cal
Subject: Re: [Electric Boats] Did the Math, and bucks, and looking less like a barge - NO - 48v. panel controller and panels-- my next step !
Thems fightin words Cal. lol
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and as someone who you might characterize as having a yetchy solar barge I can tell you from experience that the majority of people we meet think it looks awesome, a pretty big percentage are simply indifferent, and the very,very few that are somehow offended by it are usually sailors that think I wrecked a perfectly good sailboat, which as a devoted sailor myself, I wouldn't argue with except for the fact that the 30 year old wooded rigging was rotting to pieces when I got the boat and I basically saved it from becoming an artificial reef. So my conscience is clear on that matter.
As for marinas excluding you for having too many solar panels, I have found the exact opposite. Since our budget precludes staying in marinas during our extensive solar powered travels and we almost always hang off the hook, we are frequently offered complimentary dockage because people are so interested in what we've done.
Cleaning the panels has never been an issue except for the occasional bird bomb which you would clean off your dodger or bimini too and I have never found wind to be the slightest issue. And they work surprising well in partly cloudy weather. And the panels offered great shade on sunny days.
An aesthetic objection to solar is idiotic in my opinion, even for the most obnoxious of applications. Some people think they are beautiful, a very few think they are ugly and personally I just think they ARE WHAT THEY ARE, (a source of free electricity to run my boat). As the famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright once commented, "Form follows function" .
Capt. "dweeb" Carter
www.shipofimagination.com
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Posted by: Carter Quillen <twowheelinguy@yahoo.com>
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