Half a horse powered margarita

In full sun, these panels will produce about 360 Watts of power.  With one horse power being 746 Watts , that's a half a horse galloping up on the cabin top. In addition to this, I plan to balance this out with another 500W of wind power.  Since the sun and the wind are still free, it's nice to know that once all the systems are in place, we'll be able to put frozen reverse osmosis water into a 12 volt blender and make margaritas in the 90 degree heat of the tropics.

These big panels will most likely be mounted on the cabin top......or.

It may be nice to create a slide mechanism that would allow them to articulate aft over the cockpit; similar to a bimini  which could provide additional shade. 

window opening edge detail

I chose to use the strongest of the three edge detail options that are specified in the plans by Ian Farrier.

 Although my technique was certainly not the most elegant, I was able to create high density cores around the edges of the window openings by filling the1 inch voids using gallon sized zip lock bags full of epoxy/ microbaloon filler with the corner cut off.  I then ran 1 1/8 wide strips of  a heavy synthetic roofing membrane along the edges which created an edge  mold to keep the goo in place. 

 The corners and sides were smoothed down and the straight portions were backed with wood strips held in place with duct tape.

This worked beautifully and resulted in strong 1 inch high density rims around each window opening that will require very little finish sanding. 

Next step will be to sheath the edges of all of the window opening with 6 inch wide double bias stranded mat glass tape and epoxy. The finished windows will be of  8mm thick polycarbonate which will be bonded and bolted in place. I am confident that these windows will be able to withstand  full-on broadside blue water impact.