x-no-archive:yes


"Skip Gundlach"
wrote:

"Paul" wrote in message
om...

The best looking one I've ever seen--from a distance anyway--is on Sue and
Larry's restored Formosa Peterson, "Serengeti." Sue and Larry are sailing
authors who regularly contribute to sailnet.com, and there are many
pictures
of their boat attached to their articles. The reason I like their hard
dodger the best is because the dodger and bimini are one long, continuous
piece covers the entire cockpit and is large enough to put a whole
boatload
of solar panels on. It also has a hard windshield. Visit sailnet.com and
search for "hard dodger" and you'll see it.

I've done some pencil sketches of my own version of Sue and Larry's
design,
I think it's doable but quite the project. I guess if Larry can do it so
could I, but I notice that they never wrote an article about the dodger
and
they never show it close up. So, they may be unhappy with their
workmanship.


They did, indeed, write up about it. Estimated that they had over 1000
hours of labor in it, and over 5k of money. I archived the article, I
think - they talked about it in one of their solar articles...

Meanwhile, I'm about to buy one with a 10x12 HT, but with all removable
panels that also have zipouts for short-term removal. You can get a better
look at www.justpickone.org/skip/gallery and click on hightime.

One of our anticipated upgrades is to cover it in solar panels - but another
of my correspondents, from the SSCA lists, has had excellent luck with just
one solar and one wind generator, usually keeping his 800AH of batteries
fully charged, so I'm thinking about that, as expensive as solar is for the
amount of amps it produces.

We had 2 solar panels one on the dinghy davits and one on the radar
arch, and Bob has recently (within the last 2 months) added two on the
cabin top under the staysail boom, plus one wind generator. The folks
down here like the solar panels better than the wind generator, but we
like the wind generator, especially at night. We don't have a genset,
so at anchor or on a mooring we have to run the engine twice a day for
about half an hour to run the refrigeration. But other than that the
two solar panels and the wind generator have supplied all our power
needs (two banks of 4 six volt batteries).

grandma Rosalie