Summary Weekly Newsletter 2nd November
A varied week, huge progress and more wind
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It is currently 4am on Monday morning. I went to bed early but was woken by the wind at 2:30am, heard some banging and the boat was shaking. According to the MetOffice we have gusts of 49mph. Three of the 7 weather models at windy.com have 50mph+ gusts.
So I've been out to check everything. All our new solar is fine and so are the wheelhouse extension covers that Jane has made, nothing showing anything to worry about. The door for the yard electricity meter was banging in the wind, so I've secured that.
Now the rain has started again.
Three main parts to the full newsletter this week.
- Family time, including a lovely walk at Newborough Forest.
- Wheelhouse extension
Earlier in the week, it meant taking every gap in the rain and wind to test fit the progress Jane was making on the canvas roof panels for the wheelhouse extension. Saturday was our first opportunity to do the remaining epoxy work (filling holes from all the old fittings for the old winter cover, and coating the wood strips to hold the roof panels on). On Sunday, we were able to fit all the turnbuckles and hooks for the elastic and get the two sections fitted. They look great (and are standing up to this nasty weather beautifully).
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- Solar:
Two areas of solar progress this week. First, the solar panels from the Levante Kickstarter project arrived. We backed that project in June 2023, so it has been quite a long process. The panels we have got are beautiful though.
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Also see this short video about them
I'm waiting for some more cable to arrive so that I can get these wired up to the booster battery bank.
The second big solar project has been to start prototyping the support for solar panels on the back of the boat. This is something we have been going through dozens of plans for over the last 6 years. It is a complex challenge.
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Anyway, this week we got our two remaining 215watt panels out of storage and have built a frame to support them. After a couple of iterations, they are now positioned roughly where we expect them to be in the long-term.
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Anyway, these are now connected, generating electricity, and have survived this weather (another really strong period of wind just at the moment).
We did a quick video:
The Blog
Only one other post this week (from the previous strong wind on Thursday): Snug until we are not: More strong winds and rain. We are snug inside until ...
Videos
While we are collecting footage (and I know Jane wants us to use some downtime for editing) we have not created a new longer video. However, we are still publishing a "short" most days, which is a great way to keep up with what is happening. See the shorts link (don't forget to subscribe on YouTube and hit like).
In the next day or so, we should reach a small milestone of 100,000 views on YouTube. Subscribers are continuing to grow, and we are getting more comments which is great (not too many of the "you are crazy and it is all wrong and dangers" type which is nice).
That's all for this week.
Love Dave and Jane
