I had originally planned on leaving the anchorage in the morning and sailing to Falmouth Harbour so that I’d be ready for my first job at the Antigua Sailing Week on Thursday morning; but as I didn’t need to be there until about 10AM I decided to stay in position for another day and then sail to Falmouth in the early morning hours tomorrow. One of my open projects on the boat is to log and monitor the 6 MPPT controllers for the solar panels and I worked on that much of the day. The one chip I’d bought to measure the current (actually, the millivolts coming out of a shunt) wasn’t usable as it needed to be used in the same circuit (not good, since the Arduino circuit is 5V and the solar panels are producing 25-28V). The next device worked, but I could only monitor 2 out the 6 systems. The final test was done with a special INA226 chip, but it is miniscule and I had a lot of trouble getting it soldered on a breakout board, and there was no chance of me doing another 5 soldering jobs so in the end I shelved those plans until next trip.
I dinghied about the big bay off Green Island and walked a bit ashore during the day, plus did a lot of swimming and paddleboarding to enjoy some of my last days in the Caribbean this season. I fired up the barbecue for some thawed Chorizo sausages to go along with gnocchi and fresh Parmesan for dinner. A bottle of Rioja capped off the meal and afterwards I spent some time outside using the star finder app on my little tablet to identify some visible planets and constellations.
