Electric Propulsion

Way back when my dad built a submarine...Well calling it a submarine might be stretching it a little bit more of an underwater motorcycle made from an old wing tip tank from a Phantom jet, a half dozen electric motors, some pumps and a couple of saddles ( you know the kind that you put on horses!) Maybe that was the seed that made me want an electric propulsion system for my Sailboat...Maybe simply a need to tinker and be shunned by polite society.

That as it may be some four years or so ago I ripped out the old Atomic four and replaced it with the So It Goes mark one electric drive which was nothing more than a ETEK 48V motor, a Golf cart motor controller and a couple of belts to drive the prop shaft...It worked. It also overheated like a trooper and made neat patterns of solder on the interior of the engine compartment!

The overheating made needful the upgrade to the So It Goes Mark two system which replaced the ETEK motor with an Advanced Electric motor less prone to boiling water for coffee and throwing molten metal about the engine compartment...While I was at it, I got rid of the constant headache that the belt drive system caused and replaced it with a simple chain drive which also made experimenting with gearing easy as pie. The mark two system works quite well...

Not everyone of course likes to tinker and until recently the only available systems were silly and expensive ( anyone who thinks 144 volts DC is sensible on a boat may be interested in the tower I have for sale in Paris...) and the price tags for the so called systems available well I'm sure that they must give KY Jelly with the system because for sure someone is getting shafted!

Enter someone of like mind with some smarts...Electric Yacht has a very nice drop in Regen Electric Propulsion solution at a real world price that makes sense for folks who need to repower a classic plastic boat where a $20,000 electric propulsion system seems a bit silly in a boat that costs less than the motor. They currently have an all up price for the system as an introductory price of $3000...YOWZA!

For those in the serious cheap seats must not part with pennies camp or who just love to tinker...Thunderstruck EV makes a nice little kit that includes almost all of the needed stuff for $1150 for a non regen solution and $1450 for a Regen system both using the Mars motor which is quite the bees knees.

Electric propulsion makes a lot of sense and now that all the bits are easily found and purchased it is down right easy... makes for interesting beer can racing as well!

A nice design

They say if you think long enough you will find clarity on a given subject...Oh if only that were true! Boat design is an interesting area as there are truly so many answers to any given problem and there are so many variables that finding a design is easy and yet nearly impossible. A conundrum for sure...

I'm pretty sure I am a bit odd in that I have never really desired to design boats though I have flirted with becoming a Naval Architect on more than one occasion. My thinking was there were so many truly brilliant NA's floating around and so many wonderful designs in existence that I hardly thought there was anything that I could bring to the party...So many boats and so little time!

That said there are far too many holes in the available designs and niches left unfulfilled and I very much find myself one of those clients searching for a design to suit needs that do not seem too difficult yet enough off ( apparently) the beaten track to be uninteresting to NA's time and energy. So it goes...

One design I certainly like the look of is one of those project designs that some designers will run up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes exercise...Simplicity by the NA Mark Smaalders is certainly appealing and like its name it is a simple concept and makes a lot of sense in the process. Smaalders first came to my attention some time back in an article in Wooden Boat magazine as someone who understood why people build boats rather than buy them and seemed to design for those types of folk...A cruiser himself ( He is one of the authors of "Tropical Cruising Handbook") who certainly understands what is needful on the water.

I really like the Simplicity concept yet it is not quite the right boat for me without making it bigger and if you will forgive the pun even yet a bit simpler...I do like the idea of pulling the length out to say forty eight feet and keeping the same beam allowing a modest hold to be added in the process. Then again just as it is it is a very nice example of a very practical boat for most home builders who actually want to get out and sail in the not too far distant future...A nice design.