At last the solar panels turned up at the marina and they are now onboard.
The day started well, I tidied up the install of the cabin heater, then looked at some old pics of the wiring and saw that the heater had a switch assigned to it on the switch panel, which I was now using for the new VHF Radio. Opening up the panel revealed the old wire, which I had disconnected and marked with a label “Heater”. I think it’s quite rare that my future planning has worked out so well before. Anyway, the heater now shares the cutout with the VHF and once connected, the fans on the heat exchanger fired up and blew hot air around, this was before I turned the heater on (it’s hot here you see 😉 ), So then I fired up the heater propper and within 5 minutes hot water was rushing around the system and hot air was streaming out of the heaters. It’s a lot hotter than the ambient air, but hot enough for Canada in September? We will have to wait and see.
Next I ordered the Sat Phone from PredictWind. It’s the Iridium GO system, and for the bargain price of $USD 120 / Month, we get 14k Internet access, eat all you can. Loads of free minutes and free SMS, This will be our prime method for getting weather forecasts when offshore now. I’m hoping this will be delivered to me when I arrive in Labuan in about 3 weeks time.
Finally after an awful lot of messing around, I got an email to say the Solar Panels had been delivered to the Marina. However I couldn’t collect them until security had cleared them, which was odd. After a bit of flapping, I carried them down from the Office to the boat, one at a time with the help of one of the marina staff, he was a great laugh, but gave me a really hard time about having been in Malaysia for two years and only knowing a couple of words in Malay, so while we carried the panels along, he taught me a few more. A lovely guy, looked about 35 years old, but was in fact 45, with 8 kids!
I had hoped to keep the panels below until I fitted them in Kudat next week, however, they were two big to fit through the cockpit hatch, so another location bove deck was needed. After a bit of head scratching, I decided to put them on top of the existing panels and lash them down. 
However this meant the existing panels wouldn’t work on the trip to Kudat, and I need the power, so I decided to put the top panel facing up and wire it in temporarily. It was now getting late and I was keen to finish the wiring while the sun shone so I could see if they generated any power. At this point a neighbour arrived for a chat, this delayed me, but I was now thinking, they are designed to outperform other panels in low light, so this would test them, the neighbour left and I continued the job, rushing below, only to find 0V from the panel. I knew the connections were good, but on inspection I had wired it up to the wrong cable, so more work, the sun is now just above the horizon. rushing below I managed to see the panel generate 1W, which is a start, thats about 0.3% of it’s output. Oh well, tomorrow’s another day…
I have turned off the mains battery charger to let the fridge and the fans run the battery down overnight. Then tomorrow I can watch the single panel perform. However this may just be a way of ensuring it is rainy and overcast all day tomorrow 🙁
Tomorrow I will check out, stock up and prepare to leave.
Paul Collister