 Yesterday, it was windy and rainy. Not the kind of day you want to make a trip to town from a place like this. Particularly if you're a nutcase who insists on driving a pedal boat instead of using a motorboat. Oh, my legs are tired today. Oh, everything hurts. Oh, yeah, there's gonna be lots of groaning today. However, I went because there was an important package I wanted to get and I figured I'd make some good muscles. Here's the important package. Well, it's open now. Solar panels. There are 12 of these and they're lightweight. High efficiency. And I got them from these guys and I'm happy to plug them because they gave me a huge discount on solar panels I wouldn't normally be able to buy. So thanks to you guys. Those are gonna go on this boat up here somewhere. So why are these particular solar panels so important for this project? On a boat, obviously, weight is an important issue. Now on the previous version of that boat, I had seven normal glass solar panels. They're a lot heavier. Let me just write down some numbers here and we'll go through it real quick. Alright, let's start with the glass solar panels. Originally, I had seven 40-pound, they may have been a little bit heavier than that, but roughly 40-pound solar panels. That's 280 pounds. They were 250 watts each, so 1,750 watts for 280 pounds. And then I also had, let's throw the batteries in here too. I had four lead acid batteries, 100 pounds each, 400 pounds. So that whole system was 680 pounds and I could get 1,750 watts out of it. Now the new solar panels, I have 12 of them, they're 6.6 pounds each. Look at that difference, 40 pounds to 6.6 pounds. Now these ones are a little bit lower power, but not by that much. So 12 of those is about 80 pounds, 79.2 or something. And 12 of those will give me 2,600 watts of power, much more than this, at a much lighter weight. And then the batteries, I'm going to be using some lithium iron phosphate batteries. I don't know exactly what I'm putting in, but it's going to be under 100 pounds probably. But I'll just say 100 pounds. So that brings this up to 180-pound power system versus a 680-pound power system. So I'm saving 500 pounds, that is potential cargo space, that's like three people or two big people. Or 500 pounds of stuff, like more than a tank of resin. And I'm getting more power. Now you might say, okay, if you want more cargo, just make a bigger boat. The thing is, a bigger boat's going to be even heavier and the heavier your boat is, the more of it's in the water. And pushing through the water is the difficult part of going. So the lighter you can make a boat, the faster you can go with the same amount of power. And now I've got more power and less weight. So this is going to be a huge improvement over what the boat used to be. I haven't used it in a few years, but like five years ago when I first made the boat, I had the glass solar panels and the lead-acid batteries. And it was pretty good then. I used it for a lot of things. I only retired it when I made a different cargo boat. But now I'm going to have a fast boat that can hold a pretty good amount of cargo. Like, I'll be able to put 500 pounds of stuff in it. And it will still only equal the weight it used to be. Oh, that's so good. And it's going to have more power. This is excellent. Another huge advantage to the lightweight is I want to mount the solar panels like this. This will actually be longer. So one, two, three, four solar panels, four here, four there for a total of 12. And then it will be hinged here and there so I can close them up. So when I'm not using them, all the solar panel surfaces are protected. And then when I want to use them, it's easy to pull them out. And also when they're closed, I'll have all this standing room on the side of the boat. So it just makes things a lot easier in a lot of different ways. So with the old solar panels, one of these things here would have weighed not counting the frame because the frame is non-negotiable. I have to build that either way. It'll be lightweight and fiberglass. But just counting the solar panels, the old ones, the glass ones, would be like 150 pounds moving up and down here. But with the new ones, it's more like what, 6.6 times 4, like 30-ish pounds, less than 30 pounds. Yeah, like 25 pounds. I mean, that's easy to move. So that's going to make opening and closing them so much easier. It's not going to be like some huge ordeal to get the boat ready, pull out these 150 pound things. Plus the frame would even have to be stronger, so it would be heavier too to accommodate all that extra weight. Yeah, this is going to be a piece of cake. I'll be able to do it with one hand, no problem. So another cool thing about these solar panels is the thickness. They're so thin, they'll be easy to fold over each other and they won't take up a lot of space. The glass ones are much thicker. It depends on which ones they are, but they're definitely thicker. These stick up, so I'll have to figure that out. But even with these sticking out, they're still much lower profile than the other glass ones. I also supposedly have a motor coming for this boat. I haven't gotten confirmation of delivery yet, so we'll see. So I guess now I just need the rain to stop so I can build the stupid thing. It's been raining so much the last year, although the year before that there was a drought. I guess I'd probably take too much rain versus a drought. Well, I'm not going to get anything done on it today. I'm too tired and sore to go out and do any major deeing stuff. I guess I could, but... I've got kind of a mess in my house. I think this is the perfect day to go clean it up. The thing is I don't really live in here. I just sleep in here and then get up and go to other things. And this place is basically storage. There's solar panels, here's bolts of cloth, stuff, parts. I've got batteries for the boat in here, stuff that's what's it called, inverter that's going to go in my house. Everything in this place is just storage of either boat parts or stuff that's going to go into my house once I finish my house. So it's just kind of a disaster, but I think I should clean it up a little. Well, there is another reason I need to clean up. I kind of put myself in a position where I have to. Because yesterday when I went to town and I went to the store, I got some fiberglass stuff so I can build these boat parts. I did not get myself a sheet of plywood, which is something I will need. I decided instead I'm going to steal one of the floor panels from inside this boat that's not being used anymore. So I need to clean up the area so I can take the floor panel out. Because like DeShana's whole side of the boat just isn't used at all anymore. There's some junk down there that the kids left and stuff. So I'm going to clean up and steal one of the floor panels and use that as the mold for the boat thing. And theoretically I could put it back once I don't trash it or anything. And I didn't get any video of yesterday because I drove there in the dark and then the whole day it was just rainy and windy. Well, let me give you a quick reenactment so you can feel like you were there. There's still a rainy and windy, but I got the solar panels. And I put the solar panels on the wheelbarrow and they're wrapped up in a tarp from so they're safe. I'm soaking wet, but I gotta go get them.