Alright, so we're live! I discovered that a lot of my parts (specifically that reversing relay) are all over the place for atv winches. The problem with most of the things I looked at was that there wasn't an easy way to reverse the polarity to the motors. It would have required multiple relays and much more complicated writing. So I got reversing relays driven by 2 SPDT switches. Completely separate system for each lift motor. 100 ah batteries. The lift runs at 2'/min, and I need about 6' of lift to get it safely out at low tide. So 3 minutes at 30 amps, or 1.5 ah. I ended up with a 50w solar panel on each side with a listed max output of 3 amps. When I tested at 5p today I was getting 1.8a. Even at that rate, that's all of the lifting I could possibly need for a day, plus the huge reserve of the battery (which seems oversized at this point). I don't know how much current the motors draw when lowering, but presumably a good but less. Anyway, so far so good. I'll update even if nobody is interested, since I couldn't find any resources about this on the interwebs..
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