T-Pain Is On A Boat: Re: [Electric Boats] Repowering 40' 1975 20,000 lb sailboat

Sunday, October 4, 2009

Re: [Electric Boats] Repowering 40' 1975 20,000 lb sailboat

There are parts of the trip where the mast was down, so there was no sailing there. Other parts, especially the long overnight sails were motor sailed due to wanting to head a direct course. After dividing out the gasoline gallons used by the amount used when motoring per hour, we estimated 40% of the trip was done sailing only, and 60% motoring only.

While 4 knots is sufficient for most of the trip, some areas will need to be done at 6. 1000 lbs of batteries would be way too much, the A4 runs about 300 lbs, and I would not want to exceed that. Sounds like it may be a few years before this will be viable, due to batteries.

I received two prices for converting, and without batteries, is getting close to $12,000 US. Out of my ballpark, and no savings in the long run at all.

Thanks for the input.

potogold.wordpress.com
the whole trip is there, feel free to contact me anytime

From: dennis wolfe
Sent: Wednesday, September 30, 2009 9:42 AM
To: electricboats@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [Electric Boats] Repowering 40' 1975 20,000 lb sailboat

Joe,

I'm curious about what percent of that 7,500 miles you were able to sail - I would guess not much sailing in the rivers & ICW.

For electric you would need a budget of how much speed and time you need to run each day and use that (plus house loads) to size the battery bank. Ballpark - 1000 pounds of batteries would give you about 30 miles at 5 mph or 55 miles at 4 mph.

Would you have access to shore power for recharging most nights? If not, that can be another deal breaker.

A little gas generator (and a powerful battery charger) would be a comfort and a lot smoother and quieter than the ole' A4. The middle size Honda would probably get you 4 mph if you had a charger that could load it to 1.5 kw. I'd keep it on the swim platform.

Still hard to beat AGM lead acid batteries for a sail boat - especially if you can remove some of the lead you already have in the basement. A lithium bank will increase initial cost 5x and its benefits of light weight and rapid charge -discharge tolerance are not that important in your application.

Denny Wolfe
www.wolfEboats.com

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