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Further west, right on the Mediterranean Sea, there's a small village called
"Marina di Castagneto Doratico", a kind of "sister port" to the village up on the hill, where there are some beautiful beaches backed by thick groves of pine and oak trees -- see
https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marina_di_Castagneto_Carducci and
http://www.comune.castagneto-carduc...isti/gallery/marina-di-castagneto-donoratico/ :
The sunsets are also wonderful from Anacapri (the western half of Capri); from the west coast of Corsica and Sardinia; and from Trapani, or high up in Erice (the far western tip of Sicily):
So yeah, I am obsessed with sunsets. My idea of a great vacation would be glamping on a big beach with the TerraLiner, taking in great sunsets, and falling asleep to the sounds of ocean waves.
Here is an excellent blog-article that explains the magic of sunsets, particularly those setting on the ocean in the Carribean – see
http://www.uncommoncaribbean.com/20...-to-decoding-the-allure-of-caribbean-sunsets/ . But perhaps because I've felt so “deprived” of regular great sunsets for at least 50 % of my life, my approach to sunsetology in this series of posts will be a good deal more scientific and systematic than this article. I will often try to nail down good TerraLiner glampspots that have great sunsets, and then determine whether these would also be good places for the TerraLiner to be, from other points of view, e.g. solar, wind, security, etc.
If sunsets aren't your thing, then just skip over those posts that delve deeply into “sunsetology”.
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3. DNI, Wind-Maps, Low Pressure Cells, Fetch, Wave-Height Maps, and Lots of Videos of Surfing
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There is the added fundamental issue that if the TerraLiner is to have “maximal solar” – more solar cells than any RV ever built – then it's also important to think in detail about how and under what conditions the solar cells will work. So what follows will be filled with lots of maps of “
DNI”, or
“Direct Normal [Solar] Irradiation”, as well as maps suggesting the kinds of things that can block good DNI, for instance, equatorial precipitation:
Even though countries like Columbia, Venezuela, the Congo, and Indonesia should have great DNI, because they are situated right on the Equator, their weather is so perpetually wet or overcast, that their DNI levels are actually quite poor. So equatorical Africa and equatorial South America, where the sun sits directly overhead, would be exactly those locations where the TerraLiner might find itself heavily reliant on a secondary diesel generator for power. These are equatorial countries where the solar panels will be working at minimal efficiency, not maximum.
In this gargantuan series of posts I will be exploring such “details” at great length.
Furthermore, I will be exhibiting an obsession with surfing. My agenda will not be merely finding great glamp-sites, but great glamp-sites with great surf. So I will go deeply into the details of seasonal Low-Pressure systems, "Fetch", and Wave Height. And get ready for lots and lots of videos about surfing......:sombrero:
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Yes, there is a
huge quantity of information and material here. But I hope that at least some of it will prove useful, and that it will help “advance” the thinking of those who are truly interested in this thread. I know that these posts helped my own thinking tremendously, just researching and writing them! And believe it or not, this is my idea of fun…..
.... So this is a very “idiosyncratic” series of posts, posts that I sort of gifted to myself, in celebration of the end my academic year.
Remember:
YOU DO NOT HAVE TO READ THESE POSTS!!!
So please, if you don't like what follows, or if you simply don't like the quantity, yes, I know perfectly well that I've posted a mountain of material all in one go.
Please do not respond with complaints following these posts. I've only posted so much stuff in one place, in one go, because those who have long attention spans may find this useful. For those who don't have the time or the interest to follow these posts,
please just ignore them, and skip ahead as if they'd never happened.
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CONTINUED IN NEXT POST
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