What size engine for an E25

What size engine for an E-25

I just recently bought an E25 and need to buy a new engine. (it came with a seagull motor). I'd like to get one big enough to have an alternator to be able to help charge the batteries. Will the transom support a 102 pound 4 stroke? Thanks for your input!

FWIW, I've enjoyed not being wed to my motor for electricity. The alternator on my 8hp outboard is so small as to be useless for recharging a house bank. You would need to run a small engine like that the majority of your time out to keep up with the electrical comforts of cruising. And with a boat this size it's so easy to handle under sail that you don't NEED to run the engine much at all. I think it's a fine setup if you have shore power, and you don't plan to venture out for more than a weekend at a time. But for any other situation, I'd spend $300 on a ~40w solar panel. With a decent sized house bank, that should be plenty of charging capacity. It's worked well for me with 2 golf-cart batteries.

Good luck, Nate

OB power - Q&A

JT,
I moved your thread to where more readers will find it. There are quite a number of existing threads on OB sizing for your length boat on this site.
Use the Search function above... try words like outboard, Honda, Yamaha, etc.
Settle down with a fresh cup of coffee and work through a pile of threads that should have a lot of the information you seek.
FWIW, as much as we loved our Yamaha 10 Hi Thrust on our prior 26 footer for a decade, it never seemed to keep our house bank fully charged. (Admittedly this could have been operator error, too!)

Nate's advice is excellent, BTW. (as usual ! )

Happy Info Hunting.


Loren

Good point and makes sense - Thanks.
Still, any insight as to the weight/hp limitations of the transom?

E25

JtFauth-

I have a Mercury 8 h.p two stroke on my E25 and it pushes her through it all. If you are mounting it in the cut-out to the starboard side of the rudder. Weight is not the issue, but rather size is. With the 4-strokes 8 h.p and up you will have virtually zero turning radius. The abililty to use the motor to swing the boat around in tight places is a necessity.

I just bought the charging kit to be installed this spring. As Nate stated the charging output is low, but its better than nothing. If your boat does not have access to shorepower, get a small solar panel. I dont think you will need the $300 version, but take a look at what fits your needs.

Regards-
Rob Hessenius

Loren Beach said:

Nate's advice is excellent, BTW. (as usual ! )

Click to expand...

Thanks Loren. (As long as my input is at least occasionally helpful I don't feel quite as guilty for lingering here for years after deciding not to buy the E30 that originally brought me to the site. Maybe one of these years I'll do right by the forum, and move up to a nice E-boat. Until then I hope I'm not out of place.)

Rob Hessenius said:

If your boat does not have access to shorepower, get a small solar panel. I dont think you will need the $300 version, but take a look at what fits your needs.

Click to expand...

Depends how big your battery bank is, how sunny your cruising grounds are, and how long you cruise for.

The way I thought about it is as follows:

If you have a small panel (like 15 watts - a little trickle-charger) then you basically need to have a battery bank that can keep up with your cruising needs for as long as you plan to be on board, because the input from the solar panel will be lower than your draw. (I'm talking here about a boat with a tiller pilot, basic electronics, and normal use of a couple cabin lights.)

For my 26 footer, I get about 36 hours of underway time from my 220ah battery bank. That's non-stop tillerpilot, electronics, and lights at night. If that were my longest trip, I'd be fine with a smaller panel, because I could then leave the boat on the hook, and allow a small battery to recharge it over a week until next use. But I wanted the ability to take a weeklong trip - maybe an overnight sail, and then stay aboard for a week gunkholing around at the destination. This requires me to be able to charge as fast as I consume electricity. So I needed a panel that's larger. With my 40 watt panel, I don't get any dip in my voltage during a sunny day sailing with the autopilot on. On a long cloudy day, my voltage might drop to 80%, but it only takes a couple hours of sun to get that back up to 90-something percent, and a day to completely top-off the bank. On a 2-day trip from Mass to Downeast ME last spring, with a couple hours of sun during the dreadfully slow 2-day, 1-night delivery, the batteries were down to about 12.1 volts (as low as I'd care to go). As soon as we got some sun on the last day, the batteries started climbing back up, and the day after we finished the trip, the charge was back up to full. I consider this my worst case scenario - 2 days straight tillerpilot use, with no sun - and the system was at it's limit, but worked.

I think I paid $300 for my panel, and about $40 for my charge controller. Money well-spent when I consider that it saves me from having to use gas, producing smell and noise, just to charge up.

Nate

HP, weight, depth, practicality

Making sure your outboard shaft reaches plenty deep enough into the water so it won't cavitate when the boat hobby-horses in the chop is really, really important. And of course, if you are very close to the shore and the docks, as our boats tend to be frequently, I would make sure whatever motor and power combination you end up with works flawlessly here in tight places with traffic, shallow breaking waves, slop, etc. I have found that learning to effectively coordinate the use of a centerboard and using the rudder along with the ability to twist the motor port/stb greatly enhances your ability to maneuver a sailboat in a tight spot. My old boat would spin around in place with a combination of the aforementioned.

Hanging any amount of weight off the back of any 25' sailboat should also be minimized - and this should influence your decisions to some degree. The transom is designed to take on only so much weight and HP. And, you are putting weight way aft of the balance point of the boat. This is a case of where "less might be better."

I think weight and depth of prop are at least as important as the amount of horsepower you think you need.

I would think carefully about coming up with a combination that is as light as possible and the minimum amount of horsepower to get the job done everytime. Re-gearing and prop pitch may solve some problems. Where you sail and the severity of weather may also factor into your decision. It is pretty easy to overkill this problem, in my humble opinion. Stay light.

Steve Swann
E25 Seahorse

Hi,
Both E25's that I have purchased have been fitted with a 9.9 h.p. four-stroke by the previous owners. Whether this is a coinsidence or the best size I don't know, and am somewhat curious. There must be a formula. I would think that no matter what conditions you sail, the Murphy Law of worst possible scenerio for having to motor comes into play, i.e., I once had to motor in conditions where sometimes headway can't be had, and that is not really a fun game. - chris

E25 engines

I had a 9.9 evinrude saildrive on Asylum (my 74 E25)for many years, she never felt stern heavy. Although about 6-7 hp is more than enough to get her to hull speed, the extra power was very handy when bucking a headwind/chop and backing down, as after all these are (relatively) heavy boats. The alternator would not bring the Batts up to full but it would run the running and cabin lights at night. Alas all good things must pass and the motor was stolen off my transom while moored on a can a number of years back. I now have a 14 hp (the only long shaft I could find on the used market here in SD at the time) which is too large. (transom is plenty strong enough, after all it IS an Ericson, but its just too big) comes out of the hole like a ski boat tho . . . for a second or too . . (kidding)
John