We cruised the short cruise from Patos Island to Fossil Bay on Sucia Island this morning. (We never saw those Carhartt guys again, by the way.)
It's just us and two sailboats on the mooring balls, and one power boat over at the dock. I can't even imagine this place in the summer, with every mooring ball filled (sometimes with more than one boat each) and every campsite occupied…that place is probably a zoo!
Once moored, we did some work for a bit, had a little lunch, and then went ashore for our favorite Sucia Island activity: hiking.
Fox Cove:
We decided on the hike out/up to Ev Henry Point. This is a gorgeous (short and steep…maybe 2.5 miles?) hike. The last time we hiked up here we surprised a couple of eagles that were in the trees just 20 feet above our heads or so. No eagles this time, but what a beautiful day.
You can see on this map, Ev Henry Point is at the bottom of the map:
Looking back towards Fox Cove:
Ooooh, artsy:
Moss-lined trails:
Nice of this tree to grow a little arch over our path, huh?
The view from Ev Henry Point:
The bark of a madrone tree:
Back at Fossil Bay:
We may stay here another night and do some more hiking tomorrow. Dinner tonight is either going to be chicken curry, or spaghetti squash spaghetti with a bolognese sauce. Haven't decided yet.
Happy Wednesday!
Watmough is really a pretty place. Looking at your photos made me feel like I was back there once again. Just wanted to share one of my pics from last summer. Sunset at Watmough…
Beautiful!! Thanks for sharing. 🙂 We hadn’t been to Watmough in a while…it was nice to be back!!
You continue to awe me, living on your boat. Love your pics. Though I enjoy the freedom of living in my rv, it must be so very peaceful out there on the water.
Thanks so much, Robyn! Yes, the peacefulness of being on the water, anchored in some little cove, is unbeatable. Being somewhere beautiful in the RV comes close, but it doesn’t rock you to sleep like the water does. 🙂
What is your calm waters secret? Looks placid.
Calm waters secret: watch the weather and go when it’s calm. 🙂
The luxury of choice
Any news to report about the new solar charging system? Sure, first cruise being around the equinox not super ideal, but you can tell whether the new panels are outperforming the old.
The new panels are significantly outperforming the old ones. In practice, the old system would almost never deliver more than 10 amps in the best conditions. We’ve already seen peaks of almost 30 amps with the new system.
On one clear day, the new system delivered a total of about 110 amp hours. We never measured the old system, but that’s a pretty significant contribution. In the winter, running the heater most of the time, refrigerator, freezer, lighting, computers, etc., we use a little over 200Ah per day, so in that case, the new solar supplied a little more than half of our daily need. As the season gets later, this will improve. We won’t use as much electricity (not as much heat, light), and the solar will be producing more because the days will of course be longer.
I think we mentioned…we installed a separate MPPT controller for each panel. This allows us to monitor what the panels are doing separately and, keeps one panel that may be getting partial shade, from affecting the whole system. What we’ve learned from that is that the effect from partial shade is shocking. The mast on the boat casting a shadow over about two cells on a 60-cell panel reduces the output of that panel by about 90%! Given that the boat has a mast, there’s nowhere to put the panels that guarantees that one of them won’t be partially shaded some of the time. With the boat at anchor and constantly spinning, having two controllers (that can make the best of the situation) is a big deal.
Great to hear how good the new solar charge system is working. Kyocera is certainly top quality. Shadows on a panel, even a small area, degrades output so greatly. That two controller setup is the deal. I am ponderinng how to place mine completely out of shade, hard to do on a sailboat.
And by “hard” you must mean “impossible” 🙂 Just get rid of those pesky sails!
Best idea for keeping solar panels out of shadows: install array on dinghy top and tow behind boat😀