T-Pain Is On A Boat: Re: [Electric Boats] Crossing the Altantic with solar power

Monday, February 14, 2011

Re: [Electric Boats] Crossing the Altantic with solar power

http://www.theplastiki.com/ it's also made with soda bottles.

Nanci

-----Original Message-----
From: Mike <biankablog@verizon.net>
To: electricboats@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Mon, Feb 14, 2011 8:40 am
Subject: Re: [Electric Boats] Crossing the Altantic with solar power

Eric:

There is a solar boat currently crossing the Pacific that has already crossed the Atlantic. Last I read they had just left the Galapagos heading for New Zealand. Not sure if it is the same boat or not. I'll try and find a link or maybe some one else has it.

Capt. Mike

http://biankablog.blogspot.com

--- On Mon, 2/14/11, Eric <ewdysar@yahoo.com> wrote:

From: Eric <ewdysar@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [Electric Boats] Crossing the Altantic with solar power
To: electricboats@yahoogroups.com
Date: Monday, February 14, 2011, 3:45 AM

Richard,

Thanks for the link. As a boat that has aready been built and used in the real world, we can use it as a case study. This is another one of those sites where I would like to see a summary of observed performance compared to the projected performance.

I did find the following bit of informtion in one of their press releases. They covered the 2700nm from Las Palmas to Martinique in 30 days. That works out to an average of 90nm pey day. On days of complete calm weather, they reported up to 83nm per day. They transitted the Atalantic on the North Equatorial current, which can provide up to 30nm a day. If we de-rate the effect of the current to 1kt, we can see that they could power 60nm in 24 hours or 2.5kts average speed.

While this is quite admirable, it is not exactly "a constant speed of 5–6 knots (10–12 km/h) 24 hours a day, equivalent to the average speed of sailing yachts." Perhaps they were just taking their time and they could have done this passage in half the time, but we really don't have any way of knowing.

A 54' x 22' power cat, I believe that it was much more spartan than a typical houseboat, not exactly a liveaboard. They carried 700 square feet of solar panels rated at 10kW. Each hull carries 25kWh of lead acid batteries (around 1200 pounds) for running at night. If I guess that in December near the equator, they were collecting 4 times the rating from the solar panels in a day (thanks Jim) they probably collected up to 40kWh of power per day. That works out to 1660W available 24 hours a day. Keep your house loads down and you could use most of that for propulsion.

So, this shows what $750,000US could build you in 2006. A boat that is designed for a single purpose, this one journey. There was no plan to ever bring it home. The organization planned on selling it once it got to New York. Does anyone know what happened to it?

Fair winds,
Eric
Marina del Rey, CA

--- In electricboats@yahoogroups.com, Richard Mair <fullkeel2000@...> wrote:
>
> ... Check out this site for what can be done if you have never seen it but I think they had a large budget..http://www.transatlantic21.org/
>
> Richard