Sailing Nandji – Ep 32, Installing flexible solar panels
In this episode of Sailing Nandji, we are preparing our sailboat for her first ocean crossing. Bonita receives new flexible solar panels from Solbian and takes them over to a sail maker – Kore Sails for installation.
Aaron from Kore Sails lets Bonita use his sewing machine to sew them onto the Bimini. She take you through the process of how to sew the solar panels onto the bimini. Aaron comes up with a design, creating a weatherproof flap to cover the panels cables.
She then takes the bimini and the solar panels back to the yacht. Yosh comes home from working away to assist her with the rest of the installation. We put the bimini back onto the yacht with the solar panels attached and get started with wiring them up.
Yosh tells you specs and information about the solar panels. He shows you how he wires them hidden in the bimini and down the staunchen pole. The cables run down into the yacht and through to the navigation table. He installs the control panels.
We announce that we are not ready in time to make the down-under rally due to our boat-work not being completed in time. We are sailing to New Caledonia by ourselves and will meet up with the crew from the rally in New Caledonia.