Going Solar

I've been looking for a good flexible solar panel for a while now. I was bidding on Ebay for a Brunton SolarRoll and lost. Then I bid on another and lost. And am I glad. While Brunton makes a nice storable solar panel, it only pushes out 14 watts and they retail for $325 at best. I found a site that offers the Uni-Solar USF-32 for $230. It's 32 watts, much more durable, and even had mounting grommets so I can lash it to the mainsail cover quite easily. Some of the more outrageous prices are over $400, but most hover over $300. The price, in fact, is so good that I wonder if it will ever show up. I'm always skeptical of anything that's too good of a deal.

http://www.solarservices.com

UPDATE:

I just got an email from those folks. The panel is sold out. No more until 2006. I guess it's back to Ebay for me.

Half Moon Bay Trip

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Brian Vaughan and I took Star-Splitter down the coast from San Francisco to Half Moon Bay and back this last weekend. It took us quite a while to get there, as the wind and tides seemed to be in concert against us. However, once we were there the harbormaster was nice enough to accomodate us with a guest side-tie so that we didn't have to anchor out, and while Brian slept I walked up to the Harbor Bar and had a couple beers before crawling into the v-berth and geting some much needed rest. We woke the next morning, motored out of the anchorage, put up the sails and flew home without so much as even needing to tend to the tiller (R2D2, the ship's autopilot, took the helm). We blew in under the Golden Gate running at better than 7 knots, thanks to the flooding tide.

The pictures... one looks like a picture of a buoy. It's not -- look behind it, zoom in if you have to. That's the Golden Gate bridge as seen from the ocean. Another picture is the coastline. That's Pacifica. When Mika lived there I used to watch the boats go by and wonder who was at the helm and where they were heading. When fierce storms would blow I'd watch ships suffer and I'd worry about their crew. I also sort of wondered what Pacifica looked like from the water. Now I know.