Flexible Solar on a Budget

When we set off on our sixmonth Caribbean cruise aboard Iteration, our 53ft Amel Super Maramu, my husband, Ryan, and I planned to add solar power to minimize generator usage. Many Super Maramu owners choose to install a solar arch off their sterns, but we weren’t fans of how this would look, or how much it would cost. We decided that a flexible solar array on our bimini would be the best solution. We wanted as much power as we could get from biminimounted solar panels—without paying an arm and a leg. Luckily, we found high-performance components that didn’t break the bank.

We didn’t have time to deal with our solar design before we cast off, so for the first two-thirds of our voyage, we relied on our diesel generator to keep our 24V house battery bank topped off. The silver lining is that we collected realistic power consumption data for our cruising needs. Ryan estimated that we used 108Ah