Never waste a Kiss
I confess, I am frequently guilty of surrendering to the old adage: “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!”
Scheduled maintenance is one thing, but shinnying up a 57 foot mast, just because a hurricane is expected is another. My laziness caused a load of secondary problems with my ubiquitous Kiss wind generator.
This big, heavy wind turbine has been around for 21 years and can still be seen churning out electricity in nearly every marina in the world. It has also worked flawlessly for the ten years I have owned my Schooner Britannia and goodness knows how many years before that.
When I modified the rig I mounted it high up my main mast for two reasons: it would be less noisy up there and catch more wind.
The downside is that it was rarely ever inspected that is until a certain whopping hurricane named Dorian rolled up the Florida eastern seaboard in October 2019. Gusts of 100 mile per hour were recorded at Cape Canaveral, which is enough to send any wind generator into orbit; even without the
