Nick & Megan are now living aboard their fourth boat, a Leopard 46' catamaran, and share their experiences & travels via their website and YouTube channel. With many years & miles of cruising experience they regularly share tips & advice to fellow cruisers and those looking to set off on a similar journey. In their time they have set up many different solar systems on their boats and on the land. We are super excited by their most recent videos that show off their solar set up aboard 'Clarity'.
Their video not only goes into the SunPower solar set up but also power management as a whole, explaining the concepts of power in ways that make it much easier to understand. Once the whole watts, amps & volts thing clicks it all starts to make sense & I like their use of the water analogy to highlight your power use and the different ways to top up.
Being a catamaran they certainly have the advantage of more usable roof space for solar, than say a monohull would have, and so they added 7x170W SunPower flexible solar panels on deck. They also have 4x327W SunPower fixed frame solar panels aft for a total solar system size of 2,400W (2.4kW) You will often see fixed frame solar panels on catamarans as they have the dinghy davit/arch which can support the weight of the panels. Each panel can weigh as much as 41lb each!
Enjoy Nick & Megan's video (below) they are now truly a Sun Powered Yacht with 2.4kW of SunPower high efficiency solar panels and now enjoy clean & quiet, renewable power from the sun. Stay tuned to see if they decide to remove their old, noisy generator from the boat! Also head to YouTube to see more of their videos.