Generator as "Get Home" power

[ranger58sb]

20 miles is the battery range of the Catalina 30 at 4kn. More if you go even slower. That's battery only. If you size the generator or genset properly, range is limited only by fuel.

The idea is to run the "get home" from the generator. I wouldn't bother with a large battery bank for that mission, just a small one to smooth power draw and handle torque bursts (like stopping.)

Got it, thanks for additional insight.

Chris: I think your "three minds" put it all in the proper perspective. In most any marine system back up and redundancy only go so far. You have looked at the problem in one direction- having a common shaft. It goes the other way too, both the main and the gen sets use fuel that originally came from a common tank. So it is possible that the main goes down from a fuel related problem and the gen set running the get home only works while its own day tank is used (about 10 hrs or so). You can plan and create redundancy and you still have to hope for the best.

Ah. Right. Fuel, tanks, and delivery systems too. Yep, good reminder. Now I'm of four minds.



-Chris