Got home Tuesday night around 11:30pm, was a long drive back through the washing machine, thankfully most of the Labor Day traffic had cleared out by then. We got the boat back on the trailer, put it back into the storage lot, and then a long 6 hour drive back to Tucson. We had work bright and early Wednesday morning, then I had a production meeting at 5pm followed by a couple hours of filming, but made it home by eight and to put together a vacation clip. Also added it to the bottom of the first post here, you can fast wind past the home improvement to get to the sailing part if you'd like, sometimes I'd like to do that irl, especially that fuel line bit...
Re: Happy Labor Day from Lake Powell!
Posted: Thu Sep 04, 2025 10:39 am
by Russ
Great video!
Now I see what you mean by sewing the solar panels into the bimini. Seems like a clever way to attach them.
I don't know much about solar controllers. Did you feed it the solar panels in a series? Is that how you got those volts? I never knew what the "load" connector on my controller is for. I don't have it connected to anything.
The water heater is clever. Looks small enough that it's not in the way.
Oh and I love the "Star Wars" titles. Perfect for your boat.
Re: Happy Labor Day from Lake Powell!
Posted: Thu Sep 04, 2025 11:48 am
by tuxonpup
Russ wrote: ↑Thu Sep 04, 2025 10:39 am
Great video!
Now I see what you mean by sewing the solar panels into the bimini. Seems like a clever way to attach them.
I don't know much about solar controllers. Did you feed it the solar panels in a series? Is that how you got those volts? I never knew what the "load" connector on my controller is for. I don't have it connected to anything.
The water heater is clever. Looks small enough that it's not in the way.
Oh and I love the "Star Wars" titles. Perfect for your boat.
Thanks Russ! Yep, I just added a second matching Eco-worthy 130w flex panel and wired them in series to double the voltage with the simplest positive to negative connection between panels. The HQST Boost-Buck 30A MPPT solar controller/DC-DC converter handles converting that to a 13V supply at 10A to charge the house battery. It's a big improvement over the single panel that maxed out between 19-21V.
My first cheap PWM solar controller had a load connection, it's nice for measuring what your house load is drawing from the battery, but that's all it did. That's how I checked the draw of the running and interior lights on our second trip to the boat before upgrading and ordering LED bulbs.
The water heater comes in a carry pouch that fits under the V-berth standing up in the storage hatch. I just hang it off the mast crutch and hook it to the propane tank splitter when we're gonna be swimming off the transom. It's one of these: https://www.eccotemp.com/luxe-el7-1-85- ... er-heater/
Re: Happy Labor Day from Lake Powell!
Posted: Thu Sep 04, 2025 12:38 pm
by NiceAft
Russ wrote: ↑Wed Sep 03, 2025 6:12 am
Glad your new sail is performing well.
Dang, BWY needs to make one for the "M".
They do Russ.
For some reason you can only find that sail when you look under parts, but BWY does make the sail for the
Re: Happy Labor Day from Lake Powell!
Posted: Thu Sep 04, 2025 1:16 pm
by Russ
I just have one solar panel and a HQST MPPT controller. It works for my needs and the HQST app is fun to see how it's working.
It has "LOAD" Terminals which I assume let me see what consumption is being used. I have a separate amp meter on my switch panel, so I have that info already and don't want to push all those amps through the controller.
Ray: Nice to know BWY has one for the "M" I figured they can make one for any boat, just not on their website.
Re: Happy Labor Day from Lake Powell!
Posted: Thu Sep 04, 2025 1:29 pm
by Be Free
Great video. Thanks for posting it.
I was worried about you heading back through the washing machine on the way home. I'm glad it was uneventful.
Your engine sounds like it's running great!
You have successfully demonstrated the main truism of the MPPT controller: you have to have extra Volts or you can't make extra Amps. Was your solar able to keep up with all of the demands on your trip? Did you have to cut back anywhere or have any problems keeping the battery fully charged?
Re: Happy Labor Day from Lake Powell!
Posted: Thu Sep 04, 2025 2:42 pm
by tuxonpup
Be Free wrote: ↑Thu Sep 04, 2025 1:29 pm
Great video. Thanks for posting it.
I was worried about you heading back through the washing machine on the way home. I'm glad it was uneventful.
Your engine sounds like it's running great!
You have successfully demonstrated the main truism of the MPPT controller: you have to have extra Volts or you can't make extra Amps. Was your solar able to keep up with all of the demands on your trip? Did you have to cut back anywhere or have any problems keeping the battery fully charged?
Thanks! We've really built up a lot of trust in that old 2-stroke, we gambled on getting a boat with that old a motor but they do get props for reliability.
I wasn't happy with our solar/battery performance on our week long trip in June, and that was before we added a 12V cooler, so we doubled down and bought a duplicate 130w flex panel and a duplicate 100Ah HQST battery. We put the new battery in fully charged the day we arrived and stowed the first 100Ah LiFePO4 under the dinette table. The fresh battery ran the 12V fridge and cabin lights without issue over the first night. The next morning I installed the second solar panel alongside the original on the bimini and we didn't have any issues keeping the single 100Ah over 13V from then on. Ran the 12V cooler 24 hours a day on the 45w setting, then added in the StarLink at around 24w starting the second night. We have the spare LiFePO4 on hand as we will be adding a chartplotter/radar combo, but we've got surplus charging capacity as it stands now.
Re: Happy Labor Day from Lake Powell!
Posted: Thu Sep 04, 2025 7:24 pm
by Be Free
There is a lot to be said for a good, dependable 2-stroke. I've spent many enjoyable hours on the water with a 60's vintage Johnson and a much older Evinrude. Hearing yours brought back a lot of good memories but I can't say I actually miss the buzz of a 2-stroke outboard. I guess I've just gotten used to the quiet hum of the 4-stroke.
If you were hitting in the high 13's on your battery with nothing but your solar panels that's pretty good. I could be wrong but my back-of-the-envelope math makes me think you might have been losing a little bit of ground each day and pushing the low 13's by the time you started back. Am I close?
Re: Happy Labor Day from Lake Powell!
Posted: Thu Sep 04, 2025 7:47 pm
by tuxonpup
Be Free wrote: ↑Thu Sep 04, 2025 7:24 pm
There is a lot to be said for a good, dependable 2-stroke. I've spent many enjoyable hours on the water with a 60's vintage Johnson and a much older Evinrude. Hearing yours brought back a lot of good memories but I can't say I actually miss the buzz of a 2-stroke outboard. I guess I've just gotten used to the quiet hum of the 4-stroke.
If you were hitting in the high 13's on your battery with nothing but your solar panels that's pretty good. I could be wrong but my back-of-the-envelope math makes me think you might have been losing a little bit of ground each day and pushing the low 13's by the time you started back. Am I close?
We’d be at 13.1V pretty consistently by morning, I was surprised that we’d start the night at 13.5V and still be at 13.1V by the time the sun was hitting the bimini again.
We ended up reversing the bimini mounting so that we could run it pitched back while sailing to clear the boom, or pitched forward to block late afternoon sun at anchor. Works nicely as everywhere we want to block sun was also he best direction to point the panels!
Re: Happy Labor Day from Lake Powell!
Posted: Thu Sep 04, 2025 7:59 pm
by Be Free
For a lithium battery 13.5V is very close to a full charge but 13.1V is around 40% (60% used). That's a healthy range for lithium and actually a little better than I thought you would be getting. You probably can't add much more load on the system without increasing the charging capacity but it looks like you've hit a nice balance with what you have.
Good work!
Re: Happy Labor Day from Lake Powell!
Posted: Sun Sep 07, 2025 10:23 am
by tuxonpup
Tried out the Travelboast app on my phone this morning, kinda fun!
Be Free wrote: ↑Thu Sep 04, 2025 1:29 pm
Great video. Thanks for posting it.
I was worried about you heading back through the washing machine on the way home. I'm glad it was uneventful.
Your engine sounds like it's running great!
You have successfully demonstrated the main truism of the MPPT controller: you have to have extra Volts or you can't make extra Amps. Was your solar able to keep up with all of the demands on your trip? Did you have to cut back anywhere or have any problems keeping the battery fully charged?
Thanks! We've really built up a lot of trust in that old 2-stroke, we gambled on getting a boat with that old a motor but they do get props for reliability.
I wasn't happy with our solar/battery performance on our week long trip in June, and that was before we added a 12V cooler, so we doubled down and bought a duplicate 130w flex panel and a duplicate 100Ah HQST battery. We put the new battery in fully charged the day we arrived and stowed the first 100Ah LiFePO4 under the dinette table. The fresh battery ran the 12V fridge and cabin lights without issue over the first night. The next morning I installed the second solar panel alongside the original on the bimini and we didn't have any issues keeping the single 100Ah over 13V from then on. Ran the 12V cooler 24 hours a day on the 45w setting, then added in the StarLink at around 24w starting the second night. We have the spare LiFePO4 on hand as we will be adding a chartplotter/radar combo, but we've got surplus charging capacity as it stands now.
The yellow boxes are the solar panels on the bimini in series, the blue boxes are the battery area items, located either under the aft port seat or above it in a large junction box, and the grey boxes are the distributed switch panels. The cabin ceiling panel is the original 3 switch, and I'm changing out the cabin top connector to a 4 pin to allow for separate steaming light, anchor light and radar power runs. The cockpit panel switches on power to the chartplotter, a dual USB out and a cigarette lighter that our Starlink plugs into. The dinette panel has a cigarette lighter out to provide power for the cooler as well as dual USB ports for device charging, but we're not quite certain of it's final location yet as the cooler moved around a bit during the trip..
parts, but BWY does make the sail for the 
