I'm going to have to say "it depends". I don't know what "relaxed extended cruiser" means to you. Offshore? Coastal? The Great Loop? Inland lakes?
The Dragonfly, a 41' x 10' canalboat ( www.slowboatcruise.com ) did a very successful circumnavigation of the Great Loop. The boat was a hybrid, with a 60hp diesel, a 48V AGNI 95 (9kW) electric motor, 1/2 ton of batteries and plenty of solar panels. They ran at 3 knots under electric and any important pasages were run under diesel at up to 5.5kts. They averaged about 17 miles a day.
They guy with the 38' trawler in the slip next to me considers himself to be a relaxed power cruiser. In a weekend he'll log close to 100nm of coastal/offshore distance at speeds around 10kts (that's the relaxed part, most of his peers cruise at 16-18kts). Electric drive, hybrid or not, has little value to him.
But for a successful powerboat hybrid, I believe that one needs an ICE that will operate the vessel safely by itself and then add in a smaller electric drive that will handle the slow stuff cleanly and quietly. The Dragonfly went this route. Alternatively, one could build install an electric drive that can operate the vessel safely by itself then add the considerable onboard power generation to run the boat for extended periods (more than 30 minutes). Both scenarios are heavy, complicated and expensive when compared to a regular driveline. There are few (if any) efficiency gains at this scale and both types of drives will be running a diesel for most of their operation, keeping them fairly dependent on fossil fuels and diminishing the electric drive advantages (clean, quiet, low maintenance, etc.)
These are just my opinions, and plenty of others feel differently. So if you want to do what the Dragonfly did, then hybrid is a viable alternative. But for most powerboaters, electric drive is difficult and expensive to implement effectively.
Fair winds and smooth seas,
Eric
Marina del Rey, CA
--- In electricboats@yahoogroups.com, Mark Lockley <lockleymark1@...> wrote:
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> Hi Eric,
> Â
> do you feel a hybrid system - battery bank and small diesel D.C. generator is inneficient or innapropriate for a 40ft power catamaran - lets say for the relaxed extended cruiser market that want to be less dependant on diesel fuel and have the ability to sit and wait between passages ? obviously a paower catamaran will have a larger roof area available for location of solar especially if it was originally designed around the hybrid concept. your comment appreciated.
> Â
> Thanks Mark
>
>
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