Happy kick off of Summer my friends:
We sent a group post early March with questions and wondering if anyone in the Dallas/Fort Worth area had done an electric sailboat conversion. We didn't hear from anyone locally but we want to thank everyone who responded for all the great information. It helped get my husband on board and a few others who thought diesel was the only legit option.
We purchased the 10.5W sailboat kit and a few other recommended items from Thunderstruck Motors in Santa Rosa, CA. We bought our batteries from Sam's Club and battery cables from Amazon and Batteries Plus. The guys at Thunderstruck have been a great resource and I'm grateful for their patience and the knowledge they shared.... I had a lot of questions for them on several occasions.
For reference our sailboat is a 1980 /27' Hunter with 7,000# displacement. It has (had) an 8 HP Renault Diesel (RC8D)
We had a few challenges along the way, one being we are not as young, small/skinny or agile as we once were, so getting 40 years of stuff cleaned up took longer than we thought (and a couple of visits to a chiropractor). Also, thinking through where to place some items such as the throttle, Sevcon Clearview, and those heavy batteries took some extra time. We also had a wire wrong but after watching the wiring video from Thunderstruck, we were able to figure it out..... (fyi - don't fast forward through the video, you might miss something important).
We did have a great resource and expert advise from a gentleman who does a lot of sailboat work at our marina and for a couple of hundred bucks he had our old motor pulled out and hoisted into our truck. He also helped with lining up our coupler and drilling holds in the frame so we could mount the motor. He's been enjoying the transition as much as us -- and seeing the success of the electric motor has been something new for him to learn about. He had only seen the outrageous electric options at boat shows.
I am happy to say we've taken her out on several occasions now and have had no issues or problems. Our longest motoring has been 1 hour straight with a pretty good headwind. Our current challenge is keep the GFI from tripping on our shore power..... I guess it's always something!
If anyone is in the DFW area and would like to check out what we've done, look us up. We'd be happy to share a beverage and talk about boats!
Theresa & Jay Montya
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Posted by: montyakid@gmail.com
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