To be straight to the point here. After 6 years of electric boating I am convinced that inland boats can be straight electric only while offshore or "big water" boats need a backup of some sort. Sailing and seamanship will do most or about 80% on a sailboat and electric for 20% works just fine on batteries only UNLESS you have long distances to a safe mooring or bad weather. The electric lets you get around an island quite often without tacking and doing an extra , in some cases, several miles. It's response is instant and that is a big safety factor.
The silent pleasures are evident. In lieu of an ICE for backup I use a 3500 watt AC gasoline generator in the cockpit. Major fiberglass surgery was required to make it fit across the transom and be in a well vented, self draining enclosure with a powered 12volt bilge blower cooling the exhaust. It weighs about 120 pounds and lets me cook electrically as well as charging the batteries. The chargers I now have will not give full charge unless batteries are depleted. They are TOOOO smart. Quick Charge Corporation of Oklahoma City will be supplying me in the spring with a 36 volt 35 amp charger that will give maximum charge as it senses the current flow from the batteries. I can then run my electric motor at say 40 amps giving me almost 5 mph at a net draw of only 5 amps per hour. This will give me over a day of continuous running on only 3 of my 12 volt sweeper batteries (similar to 4D's) Diesel gensets would do a better job but at 10x the
price.
Electric has been much better than my old Atomic 2.
Dave Brooks
____________
Make your browsing faster, safer, and easier with the new Internet Explorer® 8. Optimized for Yahoo! Get it Now for Free! at http://downloads.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required)
Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch format to Traditional
Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe
No comments:
Post a Comment