I concur with Dave Lewis on the standing rigging and solar panel
points. IMHO, a genset on a 30 is putting 6 pounds of rocks in a 5
pound box. Better to keep the batteries up and plan electrical use
carefully than to burden your boat (and life - all gensets are a major
source of bad karma for those aboard and in the hearing of the darn
things) with a genset.

Rod rigging is virtually totally non-user maintainable, seriously
spendy, and generally fine for the "'round the buoys" mob but not for
cruising. The last thing you want to hear, as you pull into Georgetown
harbor on the lovely isle of St. Pomme de Terre, trailing lines from a
jurry rigged replacement for a failed rod, is "oh, mon, we got none o'
dat stuff here. Ya gots to sail to St. Somewhere for dat" (and St.
Somewhere is 150 miles to windward in the trades...). Stay with good
wire and Norseman fittings (v. user maintainable).

V. much "what he said" about solar panels needing to be looking squarely
at the sun to get the most out of them. Clearly they *do* work in some
settings but, in general... nah. Besides, ever try to reef a solar
panel when confronted with serious winds and seas? Not gonna happen...

Cheers,
   Rick Emerson

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Received on Sat Jul 22 12:38:17 2006