1) Understanding your energy needs is essential to determine how much solar you need. Start by making an "energy budget". List all your consumers and their daily usage. For example, if your LED lights use 1W per bulb and you have eight bulbs on for 5 hours a day, that would be 8 Watts for 5 hours or (8x5) 40 Wh (Watt hours). I like to use kWh to keep things consistent. 40 Wh = 0.040 kWh. It's a good idea to list what you're using while at anchor and another list of what you're using while underway (for instance, you don't use your autopilot at anchor). Remember to list everything: fridge, freezer, watermaker, autopilot, nav lights, chart plotters, etc. For example, here aboard Athena, with an electric galley, fridge, freezer, watermaker, two computers, etc, we use an average of 5.5 kWh per day. 2) To give you a quick estimate, use https://globalsolaratlas.info/ to find "Global horizontal irradiation" per day for your location. Take your daily energy consumption from step 1 and divide that by the number of solar hours. In the case of Athena, located in the Caribbean, that would be 5.5kWh per day / 5 sun hours = 1.1 kW solar array. Keep in mind that this is a theoretical number that does not take into account the shading or degradation of the panels over time. Let's add 30%. 1.1 x 1.3 = 1.43 kW. You can now divide that number by the panel's Nominal Power output. In the case of Athena, our panels are 400W SunPower panels. 1430W / 400W = 3.6 panels needed to cover our 5.5 kWh per day consumption. 3) Understand that the amount of solar you can install on a small sailboat is limited by the size of the boat and heavily influenced by shading and, of course, the boat's location. The size of the panels might also be defined by the height of your stanchions or the size of an existing solar arch. Figure out where you're able and willing to install panels. That will dictate the size and number of panels. 4) Use Victron Energy's MPPT Calculator to calculate what MPPT is ideally sized for your solar panels and expected output based on location. Based on our experience in the Caribbean, the estimate provided by the guide is reasonable. https://www.victronenergy.com/mppt-calculator. Remember that it's best practice to avoid combining panels with different specs on the same MPPT. #sailboat #sailboatproject #boatwork #saillife #liveaboard #liveaboardlife #saltlife #sailing #sailingadventure #travel ingcouple #livingonaboat #solar #sailboatsolar

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The Sailing Project Atremis #sailingfamily #catalina30 #diy #howto #sailing #hudsonriver #boatlife One of the most important aspects for me on YouTube, is to make a record for my children to remember what we were like during their childhoods and once im gone to have somthign to go back and remember. With that this will be the first intro going forward to my videos. I truly hope you all enjoy and find my videos helpful as well I hope you join in while we all learn how to sail Dont forget to like and subscribe

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Ogłoszenie na temat rejsów nie na Poly 💛 Rejs prowadzi nasz znajomego skipper, który zresztą pływał z nami 🌊 Informacje o rejsie: 💙20 - 27 czerwca 💙Wyspy Liparyjskie 💙Dla par i singli 💙Sprawdzony skipper zweryfikowany przez nas 💙Luksusowy katamaran Jeśli jesteś chętny/a to napisz do mnie po szczegóły ⛵️ Ahoyka@sailoceans.com

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Another day another project…doors need to be cleaned with Oxalic Acid, rinsed and remounted. We removed the doors and hinges to start. Cleaned the hinges with vinegar water mixture, coated the doors on all sides with an oxalic acid water mixture and let sit to do its job. A bit of scrubbing for difficult spots then a good rinse with water. Allow to dry before remounting the doors for the night. Quick and easy project for the bright work. @sailingeriskay

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