Category: Equipment

We have written so much about electricity, solar panels, wind turbines and towed generators that you are probably bored with reading about it. But our neighbour here in Le Marin has a petrol generator on the deck of his boat and so each day, when he switches it on to charge his batteries we are SO GLAD that we don’t need one.

His decks are covered in fuel canisters and containers of oil, the thing is loud and he seems to spend half of each morning running and servicing it. We are sure he has a freezer, microwave, wide screen TV and air conditioning running. No matter what he is feeding electricity in to, it can’t be worth the noise, smell and trouble of having a stinky generator on board.

On Christmas Eve while sailing south towards the Cape Verde Islands we were becalmed. Two hundred miles off the coast of Africa the wind dropped completely and left us drifting at half a knot with the current. Alone on the Atlantic, we dropped the sails and went to sleep bobbing on the swell.

On Christmas morning we were woken by a light wind heading our way so we set the genoa and tried sailing with that while we ate breakfast but the wind was much too light and the sail flogged so it was time to finally unpack our christmas present – a Parasailor.

We first came across this downwind sail while in Spain. Stuart, from parasailor.co.uk, was also in Ayamonte and gave us a demonstration of the sail out on the river We were impressed; Shane said it was just what we needed and Stuart agreed to deliver it to the Canary Islands so the next morning we ordered a huge orange and black version.

Stuart delivered the sail as promised and also flew out from the UK with a bag of goodies to set the sail up for Artemis. Twice he came out with us and drilled us in hoist sail, jibe sail, strike sail, hoist sail, strike sail, … At the end of the second day we both had back ache and sore muscles.

So on Christmas Day it was finally time to hoist and rig the sail with no Stuart. The bad news was we were hundred of miles from anywhere if we needed help. The good news was we had another ten hours of daylight to get everything working and a few hundred miles of open water with no one in the way. To add to the fun there was the typical Atlantic swell rocking the boat and we had to do everything while clipped on to the boat with our safety lines. We tidied away the jib, rigged all the lines, brought the Parasailor on the foredeck, struck the Genoa, hoisted the sail in its sock, opened the snuffer and – were sailing. We only took ninety minutes from “OK let’s do this!” to “Yippee, we are Parasailors!”

In the last nine hours the apparent wind has varied between two and seven knots but we have an average sailing speed of 4.8 knots and no flogging sails. We are both happy with our Christmas present.

When we bought Artemis there was an Aquair generator at the bottom of one of the lockers. Getting this working again has been on the “todo list” since we left but was never priority number one as we mostly have enough power from the wind generator and the sun. Now however, with a few long journeys ahead of us, the time had come to get it plugged in and earning its keep.

The generator is designed to work as either a towed generator or a wind generator. The basic housing is the same and you change out the wind vanes or the towed propeller as needed. We currently have it affixed to the stern of the boat and operating in “water mode”.

A long rope is attached to the axis of the generator and streamed behind the boat. At the far end there is a torpedo shaped weight with an integrated propeller. As we sail along the propeller turns the rope which drives the generator.

The Aquair produces a 12 volt output so we have it connected it straight in to the battery. Originally we thought we needed a regulator but recently a long time user of the system rightly pointed out that if the onboard systems are using roughly the same as the generator is producing, then you can’t overcharge the batteries. With our fridge switched on we use roughly the three to four amps that are being generated.

Above about 12.7 volts our house batteries and engine starter battery automatically switch together so we then have over three hundred amp-hours of capacity. Even if the generator was to produce six amps, that would still only be a charging current of 2%. I doubt if the batteries would even notice it.

Forty eight hours after leaving port, we still have three fully charged batteries and a cold fridge. It looks like the towed generator is the perfect complement to our solar and wind systems.

When we bought the boat, it came with an Avon inflatable dinghy. Unless we overnight at a marina pontoon, the dinghy is our connection to land. It came with two paddles which are fine when there is little wind, little current and not too far to the beach. A few times we have stayed on board because we haven’t been sure we will reach land and in Plockton we were stuck on land unable to reach the boat. Luckily the crew of a training yacht saved us with their tender.

On arriving in Wales we found the largest Chandlery we had seen since Ardfern and they had a small outboard motor just like we had been searching for. Out came the Visa card and on to the dinghy went the motor. We tested it in the harbour and today used it to for the half mile to the pub at Porth Dinllaen. At about 3 knots we are now much faster than with “Neill power”.

We have been going to marinas when we need diesel, water, electricity or a shower. For diesel and water we now have canisters which we can take with us when we take the dinghy to land. We are going to become expert at begging tap water. Electricity mostly comes from our wind generator and solar panel. So now we just need it to get warm enough to shower on deck 🙂