@bavarian59 what a beautiful boat so sorry for the first owner not being able to enjoy the work. Looks like he did an amazing job. How amazing to get a brand new used boat. So starting out with your idea someone was already working on it with you. bummer about the the gas. I plan on putting electric drive in my boat with solar wave and regen power so I don't have to worry about fuel on the boat. With the price of batteries and all the other components going down in price over the past couple of years it becomes more and more easy to electrify a boat. Where are you headed off to after Spain?
Thank you. Good idea with the electric drive. We still have gasoil/diesel and are not very happy about it. Might still be difficulty even with new Technology to produce enough power for an electric drive.
Beginning of next year we intend to sail further south, along portuguese coast. Then maybe Canary Islands. Not sure where then, caribbean or west coast of africa. Let's see.
Electric drive is easy to do now the tech is all there and you can do regen when sailing by having the prop turn under water adding power back to the batteries. 5 years ago it was expensive and difficult to do. Now there is so much more on the market with a huge maker movement building electric converted cars. Good thing in a boat you don't have to go fast so the requirements are better for boat use. With some wind power or sea gen underwater prop for generating electricity.
As normal if you get sailing stuff they like to make the price higher so it is better to get stuff that is from other systems like for the electric motor a motor out of forklift will work just fine. Even an electric golf cart can be converted to use in a sailboat.
I am planning on doing the Great Loop in America from the great lakes down the Mississippi and then back up the east coast and through the canal back to the great lakes. The trip is 9,000 miles and the cost in fuel would be around $7,000 so it is way better to invest in a solar/wind electric drive system. I can do it for way WAY less than the price of fuel for that trip.
There is a ton of batteries second hand like out of salvage Tesla cars and many other places. The energy storage costs are going down each year more new tech keeps coming out that will make it cheaper lighter and more efficient.
So what is going to end up happening is that you are going to dump a TON of money into a unreliable and underpowered drivetrain. Then you will end up having to install a diesel generator and run it constantly in order to keep your massive battery bank charged. In the end, you'll just have an inefficient version of the thing you were trying to avoid in the first place. Sorry to burst your bubble, but I've been aboard true electrically powered sailing vessels and they are neither cheap nor easily configured. Hopefully in a few years electric drive trains will be the norm, but right now (even if you use second hand components) the technology just doesn't make sense economically or functionally.@allowisticartist I appreciate your enthusiasm but I think your expectations for an electric powered drivetrain are a bit unrealistic. First, although batteries are getting cheaper they are still very expensive in comparison to conventional diesel propulsion. Second, mixing electronics with salt water makes things even more complicated and even more expensive. It isn't impossible but it ain't cheap either. You will also need to be an electrical engineer in order to maintain the boat. Even finding someone qualified to do maintenance on the boat is going to be difficult. Third, I'm not sure about the size of your boat but I'm guessing it isn't large if you plan to do the Great Loop. Therefore size and weight are going to be serious considerations. In order to hold the amount of juice necessary to power the drive train AND all the other systems of the boat, you are going to need to allocate some serious space to a battery bank. If you've ever lived on a sailboat, you'll know that space is always at a premium. For an example of weight, my current boat has a conventional drivetrain and I carry 10 gel batteries weighing in at over 50lbs each just to power my house systems. That's over 500lbs and a big chunk of real estate. Finally, your aspirations of charging you battery bank using wind, solar, and regeneration are totally unrealistic. You have to consider where you intend to use the boat. Most places along the Great Loop don't have consistent sun or wind. You also won't be doing a whole lot of sailing in the confined waters of the inland waterways and rivers.
It's challenging but it might work. With enough space for solar, wind generator and sea gen power will be produced almost the whole day long. I guess you need lithium batteries for this purpose. Still expensive but costs are going down as well. Due to space issues on our monohull i have a small 300 Ah Lithium. So far it works really great.