Solar Kayaking the Gulf Coast ICW

I decided to try and solar kayak the ICW (Intracoastal Waterway) in August 2021. Then purchased a Nucanoe Pursuit 13.5-foot fishing kayak and spent about 6 weeks building out the kayak, testing, and researching.

This website is my logbook of sorts to chronicle the solar kayaking journey. I looked and couldn’t find anyone that’s put 300+ watts of solar on top of their kayak and tried a multi-day stretch using a trolling motor. So, if anyone else wants to do it, this will serve as a resource with tutorials and information. Although some rough math said kayaking on just solar would be entirely possible, a few posts on Facebook later… and the negative nancy’s have come out. “You can’t generate enough watts.” “You’ll get blown all over the place.” “I bet you don’t make it.” Those were just a few of the comments. And so of course, that makes me want to do it more!

I fully intend to cover each of the major kayak systems in detail. The three big ones are the kayak water maker, the kayak solar setup, and the kayak trolling motor. Keep an eye on YouTube, or better yet… subscribe!

Below you can follow the whole track. You can also read about the solar kayak shake-down trip, watch the YouTube videos, or skim over the solar kayak blog. Feel free to comment or ask questions, I’ll be keeping up with the site in sort of a bullet point fashion each day, just to provide memory joggers so I can flesh it out post-trip. I will also respond to questions on YouTube and try to post regular videos along the way.

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