Or, how Commanderpete got his solar panel.

Wednesday night my friend and I were going out for a night sail. My friend is an excellent sailor and owns his own boat. I gave him the tiller as we motored out of the canal. Meanwhile, I got busy taking off the sail cover and getting ready to hoist the sails.

Somehow, my friend got distracted coiling a line or something. When I turned to look, we're heading straight for a piling about 15 feet away. Yikes! I slammed the tiller hard over.

Ever so slowly, the boat starts turning away as we approach the pole. (Now I know how the Captain of the Titanic felt). We give the pole a glancing blow and rubbed past it. Ugh.

I could barely stand to look at the hull. Now I have a smear of tar and cresote about 6-12 inches wide running along the hull for 6 or 8 feet. I had just painted the hull this Spring. Double Ugh.

We scrubbed the hull for a while, got most of it off, and went for a sail. My friend is really more upset than I am. I shrugged it off as best I could and told him to forget about it.

Yesterday he went down to the boat and finished cleaning the hull. He also left me a new flexible solar panel. I guess I had mentioned wanting one of those. What a guy!

The flexible panel is about two feet long. I think it will work as a "trickle" charger and I don't need a regulator. I'll have to read the instructions.

In the past, I used to take the battery off and charge it up at home whether it needed it or not. My outboard also charges the battery.

As for the hull, it looks good from a distance. I haven't mustered up the courage to give it a close inspection and see the scratches in my paint job. I'll deal with that next Spring I suppose.

Oh well. All's well that end well. It took a brush with disaster to bring me in to the modern world of solar energy.

I wonder what its gonna take before I install that depthsounder I bought?