Solar Panels

[Peter Taylor]

What do you actually DO with that yellow thing? Does it have to go overboard? Does it work through the bottom of the boat?

I assume you put the yellow round thing in the water and watch it gently drift away since there doesn't seem to be a way to secure it to anything!

A few years ago I used a fisherman's Fish finder/sonar mounted on a radio controlled model boat  to chart the depth of our model boat lake (Setley Pond in the New Forest)... you can read about it at http://www.srcmbc.org.uk/pondsurvey.php?v1=7 . The depth of the pond seemed disappointingly constant and we didn't know whether to believe it until, with low water levels later in the summer, I waded across the pond.  You can watch me do that on YouTube.  It turned out that in earlier years a JCB had been used to level the pond bottom; but I digress!

The cost of the fish-finder sounder things seems to have decreased a lot since then.  I did tow the one I had behind my sailing dinghy on the River Itchen and it seemed to work well.  However something worth checking if you are buying one for your Swallow Yacht is what is the minimum depth the sounder can measure.  The one I used couldn't measure less than one metre which is no good for creek crawling!  It depends on how long the system takes to start listening after transmitting a pulse. The other potential problem is the sensitivity to bubbles in the water (e.g. boat wakes).  Fish are detected because their swim bladder is in effect a bubble.  Good depth sounders can filter out bubbles or have a way of modifying the sensitivity.  A cheap fish-finder system may not do that (indeed it may not want to do that!).  However it should not be that much of a problem unless the transducer is in the wake of your yacht.

Peter

[Andy Dingle]

The yellow floaty thing is just that, I understand. A float - ie you cast it in to the 'oggin (or pond) from your fishing rod, secured to the line. It then starts transmitting back to your hand held receiver/mobile telephone and you can see the fish, bottom profile and depth directly below it - and if there are any unfortunate fish in the immediate vicinity of the hook. If none about then I presume you haul it in and recast somewhere else... I suppose it takes away all those hours of waiting, waiting and more waiting for a bite... and the fisherman's skill with it..?

For our needs, It occurred to me you could sit it in the outboard well or just tow it behind (as you mention Peter)...

This all started as my very expensive airmar transducer has gone (I think) belly up right at the start of the season..  and with an oiking great hole right through the bottom of the boat, not an easy job to change until winter. On a drying mooring a depth clock is essential to me, so I looked around for cheap alternatives to bide me over.
However, just bought the new Garmin Striker DV - which seems quite excellent for its price, so that may become the mainstay system. It shows the bottom profile which for me, needing to stay in a channel, is brilliant. (I am intending to fit the supplied transom mount transducer in the outboard well, forward of the leg of the outboard - if anyone is interested).

Does anyone have any clues on how to bung up a two inch hole in the bottom of the boat! Methinks the old transducer can just live there....!

Andy

[Michael Rogers]

Thanks, Peter and Andy.
As you imply, Andy, the poor fish don't stand a chance these days; cf Schubert's song 'Die Forelle (The Trout)' (which I sang as a school concert solo, age . Apart from enjoying fish and chips (best I know, and with good beer, at The Greyhound, Corfe Castle - WELL worth a diversion for), I'm on the side of the fish.

[Tim Riley]

I am currently running to exhaustion in the west of Scotland the following setup:
2 X 20w panels with solsum charge controller and a 75amp hr battery. We last saw shore power over a week ago and have 8 days of use so far. Today down to 12v which is about equal to 50% I think but after this we are into the unhappy battery state.
Usage has been for garmin 551s and tactic wind about 8 hrs per day + phone charging and a little cabin lighting. Initially we had a fair amount of sun but recently not so good so not a lot of changing going on - you can't beat a nice pontoon with a socket next to your boat oh and the showers etc are good too!
Hope this is of interest and regards from a beautiful evening on the isle of Gigha
Tim

[IanEagland]

Tim

Out of interest what type of battery do you have?

[Tony]

Re: The Yellow Floaty Thing.
As Andy correctly surmised, it is a float for use in hand-held fish-finder mode when chucked over the side of someone else's boat. Portable, d'you see. (Also fairly annoying. When failing to catch fish the last thing you need is some damn machine telling you there are thousands of 'em right under the boat!)
The transducer also has a bracket for fixing it to the hull - and causing a creditable amount of drag for something so small. The YFT then comes into its own for giving the ships dog some exercise.

[Graham W]

I have a long thin Aurinco Bluewater 25 watt solar panel (laid along the top of the boom) with a Genasun MPPT controller, which I use to keep my Tracer 24Ah lithium battery topped up when I'm away from the mains for long periods. However, I think Aurinco may be on the way out, as their panels hardly seem to have dropped in price at all these past few years, while their competition (including those sold by Aurinco's own UK agents Kuranda) seem to be substantially cheaper for a better product.

As expected, Aurinco have gone out of business, blaming their inability when paying US wages to compete against foreign (read Chinese) imports.  They looked at automating production lines but the marine segment of the market wasn't big enough to justify it.

[Rob Johnstone]

Vagabond started out with two 10W panels on the stern deck to charge two 12V 40Ah batteries connected in parallel. I had to rely on shore power too much in the first year of the circumnavigation and found that there were two "causes" (apart from using too much power!)

The first was that the batteries did not have identical discharge/ charge characteristics and, as the batteries were in parallel, the battery with the worst charge characteristic took all the power.
For the third year of my circumnavigation (Scotland, with few marinas for mains charging) I added a 25W solar panel to the coach roof and split the electrical supply circuit so that each battery was isolated from the other. By having two on/off switches and I could switch between one battery of the other (just don't run them both on at once!). I also found a solar charge controller that would supply energy to each battery independently. This worked (and still works) very well. So far I've been able to survive for more than two weeks without plugging in (although I have charge the ipad at the odd pub or two - incidently, the performance of the ipad 2 battery is now deteriorating)
I'll dig out the spec for the charger and post it here in the nest couple of days.

[maxr]

Despite being a competent anorak on other subjects, discussing electrics makes me lose the will to live. So, in 'Idiot's Guide' terms, can someone please explain if it's possible to charge a modest electrical setup for say plotter/sounder, VHF and a tricolour masthead LED. from a quickly detachable flexible solar panel (ideally plug-in) fixed to a boom cover?

My cunning plan is that the panel goes on the slope of the boom cover facing constantly SSE-ish, hopefully in the new small craft mini-marina they're awaiting planning for in the harbour at Customs House Quay, Falmouth (to 6m, £900/yr, Falmouth Haven taking 'expressions of interest' now). I stride down the pontoon, unplug the cover, roll up the solar panel and hurl it into a locker, the engine starts first pull, and I putter off into a constant F4 - you know how it is when you're thinking about boating rather than actually doing it.

[Graham W]

Max,

That's what I used to do when I was in a small craft berth at Pwllheli Marina, which didn't have AC power sockets.  This library article shows a couple of solar-powered installations on a BR20 http://www.swallowyachtsassociation.org/?page_id=464.  If you have a solar panel of any size, you'll need a solar controller to regulate the charge going into the battery.  My panel is 25W, long and thin and no longer made.  It is bungeed on top of the boom and its cable plugs into a socket wired to the solar controller.  In the three or four months I was in Pwllheli, I never once needed to go near the mains.

[maxr]

Thanks Graham - before the marina option came up, I was trying to avoid on board electrics, but a fixed inclination solar panel might make all the difference. I suspect an electric outboard is still a step too far. However I hear there's a big recent breakthrough in supercapacitors. That may make electric outboards more practicable through bigger capacity lightweight energy storage in a few years.

[adel11252]

I have a marlec 10 solar panel which charges a 40 amp car battery.  This provide for my old Garmin GPS chart plotter echo sounder.   The transducer is an Airmar fitted under the cabin boards. The later is a power guzzler so it is switched on only if I out looking for fish!   I relay on the blue chart to tell me the depth of where I am!  I have a masthead light and navigation lights which I intend to install preparing for some night sailing.
position of the panel is as seen in the photo not ideal but it fits the space very nicely and where I sail,  Egypt, I am not certainly short of sun!!!!
Adel

[maxr]

As a would be creek crawler  - I've read that sounders tend to inaccuracy at creek crawling depths on boats that float in a puddle - views?

[adel11252]

in a matter of fact it is very accurate and the alarm keeps going off. So I always switch it off and relay on visual inspection. The water where I sail is crystal clear so this is possible.    I have not done any night sailing in this area yet and this when the sounder might come very handy. This same sounder I had on a previous boat " a swift 18" and it was excellent  in shallow water coming back to shore during nights.

[Andy Dingle]

I agree. I use my Standard Horizon 'fish finder' on my BC23, as opposed to a pure depth clock as it gives a bottom profile, ie shows where the deeper water is when navigating shallow creeks and helps me a lot in staying in the channel. It also gives an indication of the type of bottom - soft mud, sand etc.
I sail in 'muddy' water with zero downward visibility so any means of indicating depth is a real bonus and I find it very accurate. I usually only have my centreboard down enough so the boat can grip the water and give steerage, the rudder will either be floating barndoor style behind, fairly uselessly or I 'steer' with the outboard. This gives probably a max draft of less than two feet, which is pretty impressive I think as I pass other boats who will have to wait half an hour or so for the tide to lift them.
My set up is probably not ideal for BR's or BRe's with more limited power supplies but I also have a Garmin Striker 4 with the new CHIRP transducer which is the absolute DB's and hardly uses any power, it also gives your position and records track (that is downloadable). It's not a chart plotter though.

Regards

Andy