Customer Reviews

We are back home from our 2 week cruise in Southern New England and continued testing of our two 175W solar panels. They acted flawlessly and kept the house batteries at a full state-of-charge.
We only ran the engine for propulsion. It has now been at least 7-weeks since we disconnected from shore-power. In conclusion, you have give us the power independence we dreamed of and the outcome has been far better than we conservatively hoped for.
Our vacation also subjected the panels to some real-life equivalents of “wind tunnel testing” that should give others complete confidence in our mounting configuration.
Our vacation began with the remnants of hurricane Henri, the eye of which passed just a few miles to the east of Mystic, CT, where Brenna was docked. The wind at the dock was not severe, with the masthead only reporting gusts up to 30K due to the shelter from buildings and land. Undoubtedly, the wind speed at dock level was less, and the panels did not budge. The panels continued charging away during the daytime heaviest torrential downpour, albeit only outputting 0.2A. When the eye passed overhead, we experienced about 1-hour of sunshine and calm and the panels topped up the batteries to a full state-of-charge.
On the second week, we endured post cyclone Ida while anchored in Newport harbor. This was far more severe and quite stressful on Brenna and our nerves. Flooding from the torrential downpours has been widely reported in the national news. In addition to the rain we experienced severe wind for almost 9 hours. Early in the night we were hit by strong squalls from the N, followed by a calm spell and light breeze from the S, causing all the boats to swing 180⁰ before the next squall hit like a broadside. One of these was quite disconcerting. Brenna must have been laying against her chain as it took a while before she began to swing head to wind, and she took the brunt of the squall on the beam.
The real excitement came later, when it blew 30-40K, causing me great anxiety each time the speedometer climbed to 40K, while I monitored Brenna’s heading relative to the wind direction, and holding relative to boats to port and starboard.
The worst was when a long string of thunderstorms passed overhead or very close by, with audible cracks of thunder over the din of the wind and rain, and flashes of lightening. My wife was below at the navigation station photographing the wind speed reading as it climbed past 40K when she heard a loud roar outside. I was in the cockpit, sheltering under the dodger and glued to the wind speed instruments and Brenna’s position relative to the wind direction and to the boats to port and starboard. When she heard the roar she dropped her phone to look for me outside, fearing I might be sucked from the cockpit by a tornado. The wind peaked at 50K, stretching the anchor chain taught, creating a deafening sound and making the sea state in the harbor look frightening, as the torrential rain and spray were blown horizontally. The GPS track looks like an arrowhead, with the tip indicating the 50K blast. Fortunately, we were anchored in far enough to get protection from the harbor and did not experience any swell or hobby-horsing like some other boats anchored further out and more exposed.
You will be pleased to know that the panels and their mounting structure performed perfectly, and should not have any doubts about the Kato Marine provided aluminum framing, or the 3M tape holding the J-extrusions.
As before, once daylight arrived they began charging and finished the task shortly after the sun came out.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐