48v pod drives

[Jeff F]

I think I'm going to put a pair of small pod drives in my boat before launching this spring. It's been on my mind for a while, and I laid out the basic master plan in a blog post.

Electric boat?

Note: I wrote this in December 2023, and am revisiting the idea. Component parts have come down in price. It might be time to do it. Not much has changed in my thinking since I drafted this. A…

boatingadventures.ca

I'm taking an incremental approach for now. Step 1 is converting 'house' to 48v and getting the electric drives working with a rudimentary battery. That's all I'm committing to before starting my travels this spring. I'm particularly interested in backup propulsion as I plan to cruise more remote areas this year. My 5kw genset is fully functional, and I've been doing the 'how far can I go each day with 24/7 genset?' mental exercise.

I'll share my experiences. For now, a couple of questions as I look at the order sheet for the ePropulsion 6kw drives...

1) Do I have any need for counter rotating props? I think not, but it might be related to 2), which is where should I put the drives?

I had a recent debate about this with a couple of smart engineer sailing friends. I'm not sure we came to a consensus view.

I'm not expecting to get prop wash over the rudder with any placement. I'm optimizing for sub-displacement speeds. I don't see any particular areas that the pods will be any less vulnerable to debris. And I have no practical constraints for placement on the inside.

Also related in my mind: I'm formally giving up my stern thruster. I liked it while it worked, but I'm not that motivated to fix my broken one. So I started thinking about how I might employ these drives as aids when docking/locking. I have a good bow thruster

My conclusion is that I'm going to target where I think the pivot point is on the boat. That's approximately adjacent to the engine. So rotating the boat in place will be dead easy, and if I have athwartship control of the bow with the thruster I should get pretty good control of the stern. And I'm not going to bother with CR props, mostly so I can carry a single spare prop.

Happy to get comments. I'll try not to defend my plan too much.

- Jeff

 

[Capt Dan]

I'm certainly awaiting hearing more on the subject.
Questions are, is ur boat single screw now?
Can you design in a solar panel system that can easily be extended beyond the beam of the boat when desired? Think slide-out or fan type. Ditch the flying bridge altogether? Yes.

 

[O C Diver]

It sounds like an interesting project. I considered using Epropulsion 6KW outboards on a canal boat project. It never reached the stage of contacting Epropulsion. My concern with your pod use would be life expectancy. I've been very happy with my Spirit outboard from them, but keep wondering about the shaft seal on the propeller shaft and if it makes sense to have a scheduled maintenance interval. For your application, my question would be life expectancy of bearings and seals on motors running 8 hours per day at 50 to 100% output. It would be interesting to hear what Epropulsion says about that application at say 100 to 500 hours annually.

Ted