Our new solar panels. Imagine working on something like this while your boat bobs around in the mooring field!

We have been busy the last week. We went to the Marathon Seafood Festival on Saturday with friends from San Antonio who are here on their catamaran, and were amazingly assigned to the mooring ball right next to us. We went out to eat with other Texas friends a few times. We worked on a big project...

Until this stop we never had a problem keeping up with our electrical needs. But we found out after being at anchor or on a mooring ball for a long time we needed another power source. One of our Texas friends, Rick, gave us his old flexible solar panels and we had previously purchased a solar controller from another friend, Bob. Ralph then spent 3 days planning the installation and purchasing bits and pieces he needed, soldering wires, heat shrinking stuff, drilling holes, running wires from panels to controller to batteries, etc. (Of course this also meant we had stuff strung out all over the boat to be able to get to the areas we needed to work in.) Finally he was able to finish it all up yesterday afternoon. (Meanwhile, I spent those days on regular boat tasks: doing laundry, cleaning, cooking, and washing dishes. Plus being Ralph's assistant.) Today was the test - seeing how the batteries did after a whole day of just solar power. They were great and kept our charge up with no need for our generator or engine power! We are so happy!