Sailing Saoirse - We finally INSTALLED OUR SOLAR PANELS ☀️EP 25☀️

Our new solar panels arrived! ☀️🙌🏽💛 In this video we take you through installing our new solar panels and how many watts we will be getting from them! Chris Boock got his essential work permit which didn’t only allow him to work during lockdown but also travel a little distance away from where he lives. Chris was able to pick up solar panels and bring them to us when coming up our way to work on some of our electrical systems that we were having problems with. We have been working hard on getting the Bimini ready for our first four solar panels to be fitted down. To start with we had to sika down our Bimini portholes because the solar panels were being fitted slightly over them. Robin started with cutting the Perspex down to size, routing the edges and we used marine grade sika to fix down the Perspex. Colben then placed the solar panel brackets and solar panels on the Bimini, measured it all up and started drilling the holes for the brackets and the Bimini. This took longer than expected because of the technicalities of having to have all the holes line up very precisely in order to work. Each solar panel was fitted with six brackets, that means drilling 96 holes in the galvanized steal brackets as well as 48 holes into the solar panels. All in all it took a VERY long time. Colben and Denver then positioned and Sika’d down the brackets, used stainless steel self tappers to secure them into the Bimini and then finally fitted the solar panels down into the brackets and screwed them in. With almost 1.4 kW coming in to charge our batteries we are very happy people. We celebrated Colbens birthday with an amazing cake, some wine and lots of laughter. We also finally got our grey water discharge system sorted out on the starboard side of the yacht. (Port side is a simpler system and was put in place a while ago) Working in a very small bilge area, it took a couple of attempts to get the entire system seated correctly so that we not only got the automatic sensors to work correctly, it also took Robin a while to get the correct falls on the pipes and have everything fit snuggly into the bilge. It’s been a new experience for us having to adjust to the fact that to get anything to move through a yacht, black water, grey water and plain water - everything needs to be pumped. Denver also took on helping in the resort with their grass cutting as with lockdown, their standard garden services weren’t able to work.