CAL 40 Electric Drive...

One of the things I like about the blogosphere is that it allows you the comfort of realizing you are not alone in your ...umm...madness. For instance just the other day I got a note from a guy in the Philippines who has a CAL 40 and recently pulled out his Perkins diesel which was past its sell by date and replaced it with one of Electric Yachts drives which is capable of being driven at 72 Volts but for the meantime will be run with a 48 Volt bank.

This is not an unimportant consideration...If Ferdinand ( my CAL 40 friend in the Philippines) needs more oomph he can easily upgrade his electric propulsion simply by adding some batteries to the battery bank which is something you can't easily do with the internal combustion side of things. Which makes a lot of sense if your boat is on the border line like the CAL 40 where a 48V system just might be pushing the envelope a bit more than you'd like but then again just might be OK.

I'd bet that the CAL 40 will work out just fine with the 48V bank as it is such an easily driven hull but it is really nice to have the option to add more HP if needful just in case.

Take a look at just how little space the Electric Yacht drive actually takes up... For people who are looking for more space in a classic plastic the electric drive option really does open some serious cubic volume.