Tuesday, February 9, 2010

[Electric Boats] More On Emergency Disconnects...

 

On this topic of emergency disconnects, it is important to place safety above all else, it’s never worth going out boating if property or lives are placed unnecessarily at risk.  Whether or not a boat is accelerating out of control or out of control at a constant hull velocity makes little difference, the owner is searching for the least destructive outcome, assuming he is given the luxury of advance warning of his situation.  An electric boat with welded contactors and no emergency disconnect to rectify the situation transcends the reliability issue.  The (completely avoidable) potential outcome of an out-of-control boat is four-fold:

Property damage to at least one boat;

Death or injury to occupants of the vessel or surrounding vessels;

Public relations damage due to electric boats being viewed as unsafe by a curious and watching public.  Think Toyota and sticking gas pedals here and you’ll get my point.  Each of us who care about electric boats is an ambassador to the e-boat movement and our actions are duly noted and recorded.

Increased insurance premiums for all of us due to insurance underwriters viewing e-boats as potentially hazardous, especially home-built ones.  This only takes one recorded incident to be publicized and fed into the underwriters’ hands.

As I stated earlier, we need to place safety first for everyone’s benefit.

Monte

 

It's doubtful the boat would be accelarating out of control, however.
Reliabiliy is important in a boat, and a disconnect is just another
electromechanical interface to go bad.

__._,_.___
.

__,_._,___

No comments:

Post a Comment