I had one more day at the dock before finally heading out and I made the most of it, starting early and working throughout the whole day. The main task was to get the solar panels installed and to complete the new through-hull mounting system. The old method had two small connectors with 4 pins each, but the diameter of the pins was so small that I believe a lot of the power was being lost. I purchased a large Scanstrut anodized aluminium through hull with a big rubber block through which I had to drill holes to pass the wires. Not only did I need to drill a bigger hole in the deck, but I need to seal it and then make up the solar panel cable with connectors and also take part of the aft cabin panels off to reach the hole. It took quite a while to do all the connectors and the sun was setting when I made the first electrical tests and apart from one panel everything was perfect. That last panel proved to be quite difficult, though. I though it was the + connector and replaced that (using my last one) but it still didn’t work; and then I checked the – connection and that seemed somewhat corrode and I cleaned that up but had no luck at all there either; and then it was dark and the panel wasn’t producing any electricity to let me do further checking so I called it a day and had some food at Peg Legs before retiring for the night.
The Magma Catalina BBQ grill had separated from it’s base as I removed it last year; there were only 4 spot welds and one of those hadn’t really been attached when I got the grill. Replacing it costs $500 so I opted to take it to my boat maintenance place and they put in some solid welds for a mere $40 – a worthwhile investment indeed.
