Wednesday 8 Apr, CY day 25: Full steam ahead on bimini solar panels.
Hot day today, totally windless again. Lots of swims needed to keep cool in-between sweating in the cockpit. But with the totally calm sea, the water temperature has increased from 27 to 29degC… a tad too warm to be refreshing. Perfect temperature for Oana though 🙂 who did a couple of laps around Cloudy today.
While Oana continues devouring books, I happily set to work on the solar panels. I get the final 4 panels unpacked and test them 3 at a time (wired in series) on the aft deck. I had a grin from ear to ear when I saw our 24v Li-ion battery bank being charged at 13 amps. Can’t wait to see the result once all 6 are up and running.
To install them on the bimini, we researched pretty thoroughly on the different methods of mounting them. The options were: 6 bolts per panel each mounted with big fiber washers; or zippers; or Velcro; or poppers. But we landed on a different option: a slider system. Basically a bolt rope and a channel. The encapsulated bolt rope will be sewn to the bimini and the plastic slider channel sewn one on each side of the panels.
Sewing this channel onto the solar panel has been concerning me. Will the machine and needle actually penetrate the solar panel? Will the edge of the panel just shear off once it has a line of needle perforations? So I make a call to SailRite in the USA. As usual, they are very helpful and inspired me with confidence. SailRite recommended to use the “monster” flywheel on the machine for better momentum on this tough job, and to manually drive the first needle hole. And with Oana’s great idea on how to smoothly feed the panel through the machine, we set to the task. Surprisingly, it went very well. The needle had no problem penetrating, and with the heavy flywheel it ran very smoothly. The resulting 2 lines of stitching could almost be professional! The 6 panels took all morning to do.
In the afternoon we work out where the panels will physically sit, 3 down each side as far away from the central boom shadow as we can get. And we mark them accordingly on the bimini. Then the rest of the evening was cutting out and preparing sunbrella strips to protect the sliders from UV; plus a velcroed strip up the middle to hide all the wires, and again protect them from UV. Tomorrow we will take the bimini off its frame and into the sewing saloon workshop… which frankly looks like a bomb hit it right now!
News from ashore today is encouraging. They flew a Cayman-Air plane all the way to South Korea and brought back 200,000 Covid-19 test kits. Yes, 200,000! Quite a number considering the total population is only 60,000. But it will allow them to test absolutely everyone they wish to. The cost was apparently $4.5million ($22 per test kit). Half of this total amount was donated by a prominent philanthropist who lives here (no… it wasn’t Bill Gates!).
Good news from the cases here too. There were 2 people in hospital and one was released today. So only one now in hospital under observation. I have to say, they are doing an amazing job to get on top of this and we see real hope they will succeed to stop the spread.
On disappointing news front, in fact downright infuriating news, is that a container with ventilators and medical PPE was seized by US customs as it passed through a US port destined for Cayman. Jeeez, isn’t that pure piracy? Apparently US customs were “following direction from White House” to take all and everything their country can lay their hands on (certain medical equipment can no longer leave the USA ). Fair enough, there are places in the US desperate for ventilators, but several of the ones seized were actually Cayman owned which had been sent to USA for service. The rest had been legitimately purchased new and were being shipped.
And as I sit here writing this, there is absolute silence from the shore during the night curfew, which seems to be 100% adhered to. Even the cockerels seem to be on lock-down! We are only 200m from George Town and the only sound is the occasional splash of a fish jumping near the boat. What beautiful peace. Please may this continue after Covid-19?