Howdy all,
As usual about this time of year, life explodes and makes a dent in the hobby time... So even though my conversion was operational two weeks ago, I finally got a chance to take her out and stretch her legs a bit this afternoon. And it didn't disappoint.
We pretty much headed straight out of the harbor for open water, so I didn't get a real good chance to monitor the consumption for speed. The wife got a bit tired of "hey, can you pop down and see what the motor current is right now?" after a while. My clearview is mounted over the chart table with the rest of my battery monitors, which is really handy when messing about with the motor and controller, and somewhat less so when running from the helm.
The boat is a Catalina 30, outfitted more for cruising than racing. The conversion is the 5 KW geared system from Propulsion Marine, with four 4D batteries.
It took around 40-45 amps to get between 3.8-4.1 knots, into a swell. When motor sailing, I was using somewhere around 7-8 amps to add about 1.5 - 2 knots of sailing speed (the wind was pretty light). The wind pretty much died completely on the way back in (the late afternoon shift to West was taking a while), so we motor sailed in at around 3 - 3.5 knots using around 15 amps. When I was entering the harbor, one of the whale watching big boats came ripping back in, and with all the traffic I goosed it up to full throttle so he didn't have to wait behind me. I was getting right at 5-5.1 knots using 79 amps in calm water. Getting in and out of the slip was a breeze, although I do miss the crazy prop walk from the old prop. I'll have to adjust how I come in, as the new 3 bladed prop doesn't suck the boat into the finger the same way when I kick it in reverse.
Overall I'm very pleased with the performance of the system. My theoretical range figures where a bit lower than I thought, so that may take a bit of investigating to find out where my error is. But even so, it's plenty for what I want to do. But the real winning feature is the lack of noise. It's just loud enough that you can hear it running (which is actually kind of nice) at about 3.5 knots, but even at full throttle it's awfully quiet. I took my sound level meter down with me, and then promptly forgot to use it to measure the volume. I guess I'll just have to go back out Monday afternoon and take those.
The final verdict was delivered by the Admiral, who had been somewhat sceptical up till today. A big thumbs up from her. Sweet.
Josh
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