Went out for this season's maiden voyage on my brother's O'day 23, with him and a couple of his friends. After ducking back into the marina after an hour or so to avoid a squall that came over the lake, they headed out with longer drives to go, so I stayed behind and worked on installing a solar panel that I had picked up for it, as well as replaced the broken old compass with his new Richie Venture SR-2 that he had still in the box.
The solar panel is a 50 watt SunPower semi-flexible monocrystalline panel, mounted on top of the companionway hatch. That feeds down into a 10A pwm controller, and then paired with a small multi-function battery display meter mounted next to it. What we decided to do, is feet the wires through the interior bulkhead near the ceiling, where he has velcro strips already in place for mosquito netting. This way, when the hatch is slid shut, the wires can be held up out of the way with velcro strips. The panel itself is held down with 3M double-sided adhesive, and considering the 2nd storm of the day came through about 20 minutes after mounting it (if that), and it held up nicely, I'd say it'll work. It's charging a new Duracell Deep Cycle from Sam's Club I picked up last week.
Took some toying around to get the wires run, but now at least I have a good handle on how the wiring is run around that boat. Not the absolute prettiest, but other than needing to fix one pair of cables up a little neater, it's certainly doable for what he uses it for. The above picture is pre-finishing - they are actually neater than that, and I only had the DC panel in place temporarily because the Richie mounts on the other side, above it all, and I needed to remove the panel to reach my hand up to screw it in.
Speaking of.. I love Richie compasses, I really do. I do NOT like trying to somehow make it work in the bulkhead of this boat. With the "double" shell, yes there's enough room for the compass to mount in, but there's very little room to get your hand up in between with enough dexterity to actually screw the bolts in from the backside into the compass. Had the compass had regular screws like in the old days that would've just screwed it all from the outside, it would've been a 5 minute job (post-dremeling the hole larger to fit, that is). But, I managed to get it quite decently, and wired in with the running lights for the backlight. It looks crooked because of my awesome camera work, it's actually straight.
That leaves the only project that I want to do for the year, is make a DIY swing arm to mount my SH CPN-700i plotter on for the season, just because. He'll likely be selling the boat after this season. The nice part, is the only real expensive part of the setup, was the panel itself, and even that wasn't awful. But easily removed and re-used later. And the plotter just unbolts off the arm and unhooks, so it's not like it'll be going for sale too (can't seem to find a buyer for it anyway, so I might as well keep keeping it!)
The solar panel is a 50 watt SunPower semi-flexible monocrystalline panel, mounted on top of the companionway hatch. That feeds down into a 10A pwm controller, and then paired with a small multi-function battery display meter mounted next to it. What we decided to do, is feet the wires through the interior bulkhead near the ceiling, where he has velcro strips already in place for mosquito netting. This way, when the hatch is slid shut, the wires can be held up out of the way with velcro strips. The panel itself is held down with 3M double-sided adhesive, and considering the 2nd storm of the day came through about 20 minutes after mounting it (if that), and it held up nicely, I'd say it'll work. It's charging a new Duracell Deep Cycle from Sam's Club I picked up last week.
Took some toying around to get the wires run, but now at least I have a good handle on how the wiring is run around that boat. Not the absolute prettiest, but other than needing to fix one pair of cables up a little neater, it's certainly doable for what he uses it for. The above picture is pre-finishing - they are actually neater than that, and I only had the DC panel in place temporarily because the Richie mounts on the other side, above it all, and I needed to remove the panel to reach my hand up to screw it in.
Speaking of.. I love Richie compasses, I really do. I do NOT like trying to somehow make it work in the bulkhead of this boat. With the "double" shell, yes there's enough room for the compass to mount in, but there's very little room to get your hand up in between with enough dexterity to actually screw the bolts in from the backside into the compass. Had the compass had regular screws like in the old days that would've just screwed it all from the outside, it would've been a 5 minute job (post-dremeling the hole larger to fit, that is). But, I managed to get it quite decently, and wired in with the running lights for the backlight. It looks crooked because of my awesome camera work, it's actually straight.
That leaves the only project that I want to do for the year, is make a DIY swing arm to mount my SH CPN-700i plotter on for the season, just because. He'll likely be selling the boat after this season. The nice part, is the only real expensive part of the setup, was the panel itself, and even that wasn't awful. But easily removed and re-used later. And the plotter just unbolts off the arm and unhooks, so it's not like it'll be going for sale too (can't seem to find a buyer for it anyway, so I might as well keep keeping it!)
