Going electric

gadangit

gadangit

Member III
How we got here:

I love a good project. I’ve owned and drag raced a 455 GTO, modified a Fiat Spider and my current ride of a modified turbo Porsche that I also daily drive. Well, not any more it is in storage. I took apart a 1906 Craftsman home and rebuilt it to the original glory to match the other homes in our Seattle neighborhood. I didn’t do all the work, but I did the vast vast majority of the work. Demolition, framing, plumbing, electrical, etc. Lisa and I took 85,000lbs of demolition material to the dump ourselves. Yep, we kept all the receipts from the transfer station. Anybody in Seattle has probably seen the Handy Andy trucks, we rented their dumper trucks many many weekends. Fun stuff.

The key to a good project is having the right tools and having the right friends with expertise. Structural engineers, architects, fellow car mechanics, etc. Anyway, I love a good project. And I’m not afraid to be a little unique.

We bought our E39 as a kit boat. The boat was dismasted sometime before we bought it, the PO had bought a new mast, boom and the standing rigging all laying on the rack. He was fixing the water leaking through the deck fittings by putting more tape on the headliner below. We liked the flush deck and shipped it to Kemah from Mobile Bay. At least two people tried to talk us into immediately taking it to the dump and selling the lead. That probably would have made us even, we just paid off the yard to take the boat away. But nope, I love a good project.

One of the reasons the PO ran out of money is because the yard was installing a used Perkins 4-107 and doing a terrible job. No siphon break on the exhaust and they mounted the forward engine mounts directly on the cabin sole. It was stunningly awful.

We fixed the deck and made getting out sailing as soon as possible a priority. In the meantime, I was crewing on any racing boat that would have me. J24, J80, J105, with most of the time on a J80 boat that would eventually run top 10 in NAs and Worlds. The skipper was a former Americas Cup crew for Team Canada way back in the day. I learned to race from some of the best racers in Galveston Bay. I also started doing boat deliveries across the Gulf of Mexico. I was sailing A LOT of miles for a few years. All those racing skippers were put into our own boat’s Guest Skipper Program for our racing weekends. Some drove, some called tactics, one guy stood at the mast on the way out and shouted to every boat we went by, “this boat has an electric motor!!” You don’t advertise an electric motor on a sailboat in Oil and Gas Country…

Back to the boat: for the last time going out of Clear Creek Channel in Kemah the engine quit with an uncaring shrimp boat bearing down on us on a busy Saturday afternoon. We are good in a pinch, but this was the end. We got the main up and got over to the wall and waited for SeaTow. Lots of friends on boats slowed down and checked on us, which was very nice, but super embarrassing. Lisa was looking to me to make this the last time.

I am an electrical engineer. I knew that the 3 phase electric motor is essentially unchanged since Nickola Tesla invented it back in the 1800s. It was the battery technology that really hadn’t advanced from the leyden jar. Elon Musk’s Tesla was barely a company at that point, but I took a flyer that there was real change coming in the battery world and we could limp through for a while.

Out came the 4-107 and the velvet drive transmission. In went a permanent magnet 3ph AC motor that was popular amongst the crazy people who were converting motorcycles and cars into electric. Also, out came the fuel tank and 40 years worth of grime and awful. Our boat smelled amazing for once. The battery plant was four Mastervolt 270 AH AGMs, all 640 lbs of lead. It pains me to think of me getting each 160lb battery down into their custom made box under the stairs.

We continued to race the boat in that state. There were many many other boat projects, like a new rudder, new MaxProp, new sails, etc along the way. It is very easy to sail an E39 to her rating and we won or placed in many regattas. Motoring out of the marina meant getting the main up almost immediately and motor sailing out to the bay. One thing about knowing you are underpowered is you are always thinking about sailing and are never “surprised” by conditions. Sometimes you just have to short tack your way through tight channels.

We started doing some offshore racing in the Gulf of Mexico which was about 25 miles down the Houston Ship Channel. As you all have repeated, the range and speed of an electric motor boat is limited, thanks for the reminder. We had at least one Vanderbilt start when the wind died on the way down. The rules for offshore racing has a section that talks about a boat must have a propulsion system that has a minimum speed for a minimum time. I can’t recall exactly the numbers, but I knew we were right on the edge and, depending on the sea state, deficient in meeting the requirement. The rule didn’t mention sea state, so I just assumed flat calm water. I felt like I needed to make some modifications to stay compliant.
 
gadangit

gadangit

Member III
Racing was not our end game, but getting out and seeing the world sure was. I knew there was no way we were going to buy enough batteries, Li or not, to feel comfortable heading off to the horizon. Unfortunately the promise of better battery technology was still a promise. Our boat is approaching 20,000lbs in full cruising trim, the math just doesn’t work. One of my friends sold me a Fischer Panda 6kW diesel generator that outputs 48VDC. I wasn’t sure if it was going to work, but it seemed like I could just run the generator as needed, even at the same time to give us the range that felt safer. Thanks Honda Prius for the inspiration. I’m sure there was YouTube at the time, but I certainly didn’t have time to look at it. I was just winging it along the way.

In with the generator went a 13 gallon tank. Surprisingly all this fits under the cockpit. I have since added a 25 gallon tank as we eye going further afield.

So, to recap, we have essentially 6kW to play with to move our boat or 8hp for those keeping track at home. It is shocking at how little it takes to move a boat through flat water. We can run all the way up to about 8.5kW for a relatively short period before the motor and/or the controller start to overheat. Motoring around Maine was great, that 58 degree water kept things nice and cool. Sailing in 90 degree heat with 90 degree water really starts to impact the motor. I do monitor the temperature much more here down south than I did up north.

So, what does all this mean? Going electric is a completely viable option for smaller lighter boats. Lotus Flower is a really good example and Mark was one of the first. Like us, I’m sure he was winging it in the early days. If he was like us, he probably re-pitched his prop a few times looking for the sweet spot. And I’m sure that he is thinking about sailing constantly if he is running his motor. I know we do.

Any boat that has a short distance from the marina slip to the sailing area is a good candidate. We did it for a few years, no problem, all on AGM batteries. LiFePo makes this even better.

Lake sailors with no current and relatively short distances from which you might have to motor back are good candidates.

Converting from diesel to electric is a big project and should only be undertaken by a stupid and fearless person like myself. Watch that guy on Sailing Uma cut a huge hole in his hull to fit in that saildrive. If you can do that you can do the rest. If you like a good project, then the results will truly astound you. There is nothing nicer than humming silently along on a calm day.

You need to be comfortable with a multi meter because that will be what you troubleshoot with. The troubleshooting happened in the early days, I have not really done anything to the motor or controller in at least 5 years.

Yes you can regen. I have been somewhat disappointed with the regen capabilities. We have a big heavy boat, so once you are sailing along at 7+ knots there is a bunch of kinetic energy to take advantage of. But the 1+ knot of boat speed lost is a pretty high price to pay, so we rarely do it. But it is available if we got into a pinch. I think I’ve seen 300-400 Watts going back into the bank at 6+kts of boat speed.

We also have 480W of solar panels. They are starting to lose their efficiency, I’m considering getting some higher wattage panels soon. Not real soon, but on the long list.

We have slowly developed ways of taking advantage of the higher efficiency of an electric motor while motor sailing, but it wasn’t always that way. Even with the generator, we sailed with the wind and did everything in our power to get through light air days by accepting what we got. Even offshore we played the game. Can we make the boat go 1 knot? Concentrate, don’t lose focus on the trim, just made a game of it, all racing trim tactics apply. This is a hobby, it should be fun.

At full load our generator burns about .35 gallons per hour. Lately we’ve been experimenting with putting 1500 watts into the motor on light air days. It is amazing what that does to our daily mileage. So we run 30 Amps for two hours and the third hour we recharge the battery as the generator outputs 90A. So that puts us down to less than .2 gallons per hour while make decent VMG.

Have there been days when I wanted a twin turbo diesel making 100HP down below? Heck yes.

We did finally try the ICW coming south. We took the Dismal Swamp route just to see what it was like. We probably won’t do that again, entirely too slow with our setup. We also did the ICW from St Augustine down the length of FL That has actually been okay, we just picked our heavy air northerly days and flew down the ICW under sail. Seen some neat things that we would have missed offshore and I’m glad we did it. Going north, no way. Out into the gulf stream and let it fly. Our best day going north was 197 miles in 24 hours. Our best days going to Mexico was 540 miles in 3 days. We really prefer to sail and carry a suite of sails to choose from. One day this will get old and too much and I’ll happily move onto a trawler. Good bye foredeck, hello captains chair and joystick.

So to recap, this has not been a linear journey for us. We are not part of the green mafia, nor do we care what kind of electronics you have, what your sails are made of, and we certainly don’t care what moves your boat through the water when the wind dies. Nope, couldn’t care less. It never occurred to me to swap out that diesel engine for an electric motor until that fateful day. But I am a curious person who does a ton of research and puts that research to work. We are all entitled to our own opinions, but real life lived facts aren’t open to debate, at least to me.

The days of Lin and Larry Pardey warping their way around a marina or sculling when the wind dies are long gone. Nobody today would have the patience either on the boat or around them. But sailing is basically a hobby for everyone and it should be treated like a hobby. There is no right or wrong way of sailing or modifying a boat. We all own Ericson sailboats because they are fantastic sailing boats, but the kit on board is starting to get old and needing to be replaced. We are living in the golden age, everything is better now: electronics, sail fabrics, blocks, rope materials, diesel engines, batteries, and yes, even electric motors for propulsion.

I have ton of additional information that I can share. Just ask a question and I’m happy to answer.

Cheers.
 
gadangit

gadangit

Member III
Please tell Lisa, she thinks I lay around too much. Honestly though, I prefer a project or a good book.
 
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