Cruising_World_2016-06-07

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UNDERWAY

WWW.HELLYHANSEN.COM

The modern sailing jacket for a
regatta or cruising – lightweight
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warmer and utility pockets.

NEWPORT JACKET

Our favorite high-waist

sailing bib, featuring great

reinforcements at the ankles,

knees and seat in a lightweight

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waterproofi ng or durability.

NEWPORT PANT

A

re you sure your solar panels are

pointed at the sun?” asked my

friend Christian.

I turned and looked back at my two

100-watt panels mounted atop the davits,

both tilted to starboard, where they ap-

peared to be catching the sun’s rays nicely.

“Yeah, they look fi ne. Why?” I asked.

Christian was up to something. He

fi shed around in the pockets of his cargo

shorts and pulled out a 6 -inch dowel with

a small suction cup at the end. “You can

use this to check,” he said. He headed

back to the panels. “You’d be surprised

how diffi cult it is to judge and

what a diff erence it makes

when you get it right.”

Christian stuck the suction

cup to the fi rst panel. I under-

stood right away; it was sort of

like a sundial. Any shadow cast

by the dowel was an indication

that the panel was not oriented

to maximize power generation. But by

moving the panel to eliminate any shadow

turing the sun’s rays dead on.

I played around a bit with

the panel orientation. I could

come close by eyeballing it, but

invariably, by using the suction

cup and dowel and gimbaling

the panel just a few degrees to

optimize its position, I would

see a satisfying jump in the

number of amps it was producing. Every

bit helps when cruising off the grid.

— Michael Robertson

THE SHADOW

TEST

Check the shadow to make sure your

panels are pointed directly at the sun.

by Michael Rudolph (2016;

Ballantine Books; $26 hard-

cover, $12.99 e-book)

Sailors who are fans of

legal thrillers (think John

Grisham) may enjoy this

fast-paced adventure, cen-

tered around corporate

law offi ces in New York

City and sailboats in the

Caribbean. The author is

both an avid sailor and an

attorney; his passion for

Islands in a

Circle Sea

(Voyager, Volume 5)

by Sandra Clayton (2015;

Malvern Partnership; $14.95

paperback, $4.99 e-book).

This latest compelling vol-

ume focuses on the fi nal

leg of Sandra and David

Clayton’s cruising adven-

tures on Voyager, their

Solaris 40 catamaran.

With her usual humor

and observant, evoca-

tive prose, the author

brings the reader aboard

as the couple sails the

Atlantic from the Baha-

mas up and down the east

coast of North America

to Canada, then home to

the U.K. via the Bahamas,

Bermuda, and the Azores.

Few authors have the skill

to so fully involve the

reader; if it’s possible, this

is even better than previ-

ous volumes. As always,

it inspires; while you’re

reading it, you will want

to sell up and set sail your-

self. Although this book

closes the circle on this

adventure, we can only

hope there will be more

voyages and books to

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MICHAEL ROBERTSON (TOP); COURTESY OF THE PUBLISHERS