By trading in your old outboard we might be able to knock a few hundred dollars off the price of a new Torqeedo. My buddy Malcolm who helps out around here when I’m out of town may be able to buy your old outboard.  He has been able . . . → Read More: Trade in your old petrol outboard on a Torqeedo]]>

Let us take the flack...

By trading in your old outboard we might be able to knock a few hundred dollars off the price of a new Torqeedo. My buddy Malcolm who helps out around here when I’m out of town may be able to buy your old outboard.  He has been able to help a few folks in this way by taking an old outboard off their hands, giving it a spruce up and then finding a new home for it.

Travel 1003—the most popular Torqeedo

Lets face it, one of the annoying things about upgrading is getting rid of the old one—it can be inconvenient going through the process of advertising, taking calls, and dealing with tyre kickers, and just having to be available when you’d rather be out sailing.

Anyway, we figured it might be helpful to offer this formally as a trade-in service for our customers.  If you do want to take advantage of this offer just fill out our trade evaluation form right here and we’ll get back to you with a price. Or just ask about trade-ins as part of your Torqeedo package.

We are mainly interested in trading small ‘ portable’ outboards for use on tenders – these are usually 2hp to 5hp . Motors we commonly find are 2 stroke Mercury/Mariner/Tohatsu models with the controls on the front of the engine.  Also Yamaha 2hp and 3 hp are popular. We’ll also look at other models as they come up.

If you want to trade in your motor – it has to have some value! Seized or submerged motors are worth very little but we can offer a fair trade in on motors that turn over ok even though they may not start . They will go through our workshop for checking and minor repairs before re sale – which is reflected in the trade in price.

For more information on the Torqeedo range click on the Products tab.

If you’re familiar with the Torqeedo world you’ll know of Goldrush boats as the guys that designed and built the carbon Aggressor—the fast black boat from the front cover of the 2011 Torqeedo catalogue, and from the Cruise pages of this years catalogue. My friend Max from Goldrush is excited about . . . → Read More: Special deals on fast cartopper from GoldRush boats]]>

Goldrush cartopper

If you’re familiar with the Torqeedo world you’ll know of Goldrush boats as the guys that designed and built the carbon Aggressor—the fast black boat from the front cover of the 2011 Torqeedo catalogue, and from the Cruise pages of this years catalogue. My friend Max from Goldrush is excited about his latest family of boats that he now has ready to go. He’s been working on a series of cartopper boats in a decent size and they are fast and light.

Being a new product he wants to get them out there and he’s offering the first ones at cost for those of you who are ready to step up to the plate and buy one before the end of May, or until the first batch are sold. Most cartoppers, to be light enough to be cartopper, a just a bit too small to carry a load and do a good turn of speed.  So his challenge was to use the lastest vacuum infusion technology and light composite materials to produce a light, strong boat in a decent size.

He already has valuable experience in achieving this objective with the carbon Aggressor. This boat so impressed Torqeedo in Germany that they ordered one for the managing director and its this boat that graces the Torqeedo catalogues. So Max applied this hard won knowledge to the design and building of this new series of boats ranging in size from 3.5 to 4.2 metres.

The biggest in the series the 4.2m weighs in at around 90kg offers speeds of 26km/hr with a single Cruise 4 motor, and around 17km/hr with a Cruise 2. The size of the boat means it is not greatly affected by weight and in initial tests the speed with just Max’s son on board were not noticeably better than a run with Claude from Torqeedo (apologies to Claude for what this might imply)…

On the trailer...

The special pricing of this 4.2m boat is $7300 until the end of this month. This price includes the optional casting platform and flat floor each of which adds 4kg to the weight bringing the total to 98kg.  A basic version can be had without the extras for a neat $5000.00

This boat is built using environmentally sustainable cork as the core material and vinyl ester as the bonding.

Also available is a low sided version of this boat and a smaller boat of 3.5 metres, also available in high and low sided options.

These boats were designed for matching with electric outboards and for being light enough to easily put on the top of your car with two people, or one person with a cartopping rig.  If you’d like to be one of the first in one of these boats give me a call on 0409466271 or send a message using the enquiry form here.

Sanctuary Cove is a waterside community in southeast Queensland well known in the boating world for their hosting of one of the best known boat shows in Australia. They are now setting new standards with their adoption of electric outboard powered vessels for their security patrol.

The usual solution is to use a dc-dc converter to step down the voltage from 48v to 12v. You . . . → Read More: Mixed voltage loads and charging]]> What do you do when you’ve got mixed voltage loads in your system?  Such as a main drive battery of 48v and smaller loads such as radio, chart plotter and so on at 12 volts?

The usual solution is to use a dc-dc converter to step down the voltage from 48v to 12v. You have to be careful to make sure that the dc converter can deliver enough power for the combined load of all the 12 volt devices.  And if you have a big load, such as a 12v anchor winch, it can be expensive or difficult to find an dc-dc converter powerful enough to handle the load.

Solar Converters Inc of Canada have an innovative solution to this problem—and they call it a battery equaliser.  Here’s how it works…

What if you tapped 12 volts of one of the batteries in the string that makes up the 48v pack—then you’d be able to take as much current that the battery can supply.  But the difficulty then is to recharge this battery to correct level to match the others in the string. And this is where the battery equaliser plays its part.

A regular dc-dc converter produces a set voltage.  But in this case the voltage of the battery being charged is moving target.  It needs to be matched to the other batteries in the string. The battery equaliser, instead of producing a fixed voltage, produces a voltage of exactly 1/4 of the input voltage.  Thinking of a 48v pack, its voltage when fully charged will be about 51.2  (that is four batteries at 12.8 volts), and when partly discharged could be around 48 volts so the converter needs to account for this. If the pack voltage is 50 volts, the equaliser would keep the tapped battery at one quarter of this, which is 12.5 volts.

When you run a big load, say an inverter, it can take whatever current it needs from the tapped battery, and then the equaliser can balance the string in its own good time.  In a way it doesn’t matter much if it takes a minute or an hour to balance the string again.

Even without a single large load such as an inverter, a few small loads all on at the same time can easily overload a regular dc converter.  You could easily have a load of 20 amps made up of smaller loads all on together.  Its needs a substantial dc-dc converter to can deliver this power.  By using an equaliser you can meet these transient peaks from the battery and then later the equaliser tops up the battery from this usage.

Sometimes a dedicated 12v battery is added, together with its own dc-dc converter to keep it topped up.  This is a similar solution but requires the installation of another battery.

Another advantage of an equaliser is that it works both ways.  So it allows you to have a mix of charging sources. For example you may have a grid connect charger operating at 48 volts to charge the main pack when your boat is attached to a jetty with power.  But when untethered you could use a 12v solar panel to charge the tapped battery and its charge would be distributed to the other batteries in the string by the equaliser.

This setup requires a common negative, that is the negative of the 12v is the same negative as the 48v.  And this can cause a possible galvanic corrosion problem if there are devices in contact with the water and bound by this common negative.  Most 12v devices on board will not be in contact with the water.  But if you use an anchor winch, it could create a return path by way of the chain and the common negative.  In this situation where an anchor winch is used, and the 48v side is used for electrical propulsion, it is recommended to switch the negative supply for both the anchor winch and the propulsion motor. (That is, its normally just the positive that’s switched, and the negative is usually connected to the frame of the device and remains connected even when the device is siwtched off. By switching the negative as well, the device is totally isolated from the rest of the wiring loom)  This keeps the 12v and 48v wiring looms from being connected through the water.  The remaining connection between them through a dc converter is ok.

And come to think of it, the idea of switching the negative of the anchor winch could be useful for any steel or alloy boat as well.

And closely related to this topic is charging from lower voltage solar panels to higher voltage batteries, or vice versa.  Both of these tasks can be easily handled and I’ll talk more about that in another post.

We have a few products available from Solar Converters, for various conversion. There’s equalisers, regular dc-dc converters, and solar chargers to allow charging from lower voltage panels to higher voltage systems.  If you need a converter for a particular task, let me know, I’m sure we can get one for you.

This . . . → Read More: New pricelist and stock]]> You’ll see that some of the product prices have been updated.  The most notable changes are for the Cruise models which we can now offer at more attractive prices. This is a result of Torqeedo Australia now being able to bring in a large shipment by sea which has reduced shipping cost significantly.

This sea shipment has now arrived and stock is available for pretty much all items.  Check the on-line store for availability of the various items.

The Solbian solar panels are proving popular and some of the sizes have sold out.  A new shipment is expected this week.  If you order from the on-line store, it will report stock status of the particular item when you add it to the cart.

This is a followup to the story about the solar powered zodiac trip Claude and I did from Pittwater to Sydney a while back…  I’ve now prepared a video of that trip for your enjoyment.

Its posted on youtube . . . → Read More: Video for solar zodiac trip to Sydney]]>

Coming into Sydney heads—the city skyline visible to the right of the mother ship

This is a followup to the story about the solar powered zodiac trip Claude and I did from Pittwater to Sydney a while back…  I’ve now prepared a video of that trip for your enjoyment.

Its posted on youtube and and available here on this page. The trip was an experiment to see how far we could go with a Torqeedo Travel 1003 assisted by solar power…

We used the old model battery which is 400Wh, compared with the new 520 Wh size. It had 17% remaining when we arrived at the destination.  Whats more interesting is how we were able to run solely on solar power for a large part of this adventure. Why not take a look—the video has many of the technical details but if thats not enough, go back to the previous blog entry, a link to this is shown above.

–chris

Come and see the Sienna solar boat at King George Square in Brisbane this Saturday 28th October as part of the National Electric Vehicle Festival. This festival is part of the National Electric Vehicle Convention and you can see more details of this at the website here. The . . . → Read More: Solar boat at electric vehicle festival]]>

On the Upper Noosa River

Come and see the Sienna solar boat at King George Square in Brisbane this Saturday 28th October as part of the National Electric Vehicle Festival. This festival is part of the National Electric Vehicle Convention and you can see more details of this at the website here. The builder’s of the Sienna, Scruffie Marine, will be on hand to answer any questions you have about the design and building of the boat or how you might have one built for you.

Unlike most electric vehicles this one is totally solar powered for its normal use. Its not built as an experimental vehicle, such as you see in the solar car race from Adelaide to Darwin, but built for everyday use to be powered by the sun. The solar power is not only use for propulsion but also for running the other electrics such as the fridge and lights as well as small fan for the composting toilet. It will be used in service as a rental boat at Pittwater and we are taking bookings now for December and January.

Using solar power alone, that is, not taking anything from the batteries, she can travel at around 3 knots. This is the perfect speed for quiet rivers such as the Noosa and the Caboolture. Using battery power she can travel all day at 4 to 5 knots.  From tests so far we expect the energy from one days solar power will be a close match for the energy required for a typical afternoon or morning outing on Pittwater.

Aggressor in Germany

Also on display with us will be the carbon composite planing eletric boat of Gold Rush boats from the Gold Coast. Max Buener, the designer and builder will be on hand to describe the details of this environmentally friendly speed boat. Noy only is it electric powered but its green credentials extend to its construction. The composite has a core of cork which is a renewable product and the epoxy resin used in its construction is sourced from renewable materials. This boat has been awarded the world’s most environmentally friendly boat because of its construction material and propulsion system.

Torqeedo Australia will also be at the festival with us and will be on hand to answer  questions you have about electric propulsion for boats.

We’ll also have information available about the Electric Boat Association and you can see more information about this group at the website.

The Caboolture River is a quiet picturesque river not far from Brisbane which offers a delightful cruise for a solar boat. The trip was partly for testing the boat but really just for the fun of exploring up river from Monties Marina on the Beachmere Road.

Tarci conning . . . → Read More: Solar boat trip on Caboolture River]]>

Its a dogs life...

The Caboolture River is a quiet picturesque river not far from Brisbane which offers a delightful cruise for a solar boat. The trip was partly for testing the boat but really just for the fun of exploring up river from Monties Marina on the Beachmere Road.

Tarci conning the solar boat

I had moved one bank of engine batteries from its original location to a position forward to help with adjusting the trim of the Sienna. This bank of batteries was not installed yet, just located in place so we could the effect on trim, which is good. I’ll now be able to go ahead with making a shelf for them and to complete the power connections and cell monitoring. The new location has limited height available so they will be laid on their sides facing the centreline of the boat. The location will be awkward but, hey, boats are like that.

Here be dragons

So for this trip we were using the remaining two banks of engine batteries to power the Cruise 2. Sometimes we travelled at full speed which was around 6 knots with some assistance from the tide which was still slowly filling and almost at the top. And for some of the trip we travelled at around 3knots using only the power from the sun. At this speed on a sunny day the motor is using just solar power alone and not taking anything from the batteries. We started this trip about 12 noon and by the same time the next day the batteries are full again. We were boating for about three hours and in that time used only the power we can get from the sun in one day.

View from the bow

The Caboolture River is flowing in its floodplain and takes a very windy and interesting course. The banks are sometimes open cow paddocks and sometimes lovely dappled grassy glades in the forest. The kind of places elves would love to hang out.

Dining table of cedar and hoop pine

The Sienna is remarkably efficient and is proving to have a nice match of solar power and motor size. We motored at whatever speed caught our fancy and its cool that this matched just about exactly how much power you can get from the sun in one day.

There’s space on the roof for more panels but if today proves to be a good example, there will be plenty enough to provide the power thats needed for boat rental.

As well as powering the engine the solar panels also run the fridge, which we put to good use today, and it also runs a small fan in the composting toilet. The composting toilet is a great solution for any boat.

Elven glades beyond the fringing Mangroves...

I’ll be putting one on Current Sunshine when I have some spare cash.  It does not require a holding tank and therefore doesn’t require holes in the hull.  As well it doesn’t smell and you end up with nice garden compost.  And easy to dispose of.  On Current Sunshine the holding tank is about as good as you’d get and still it is troublesome.  It needs to be emptied regularly and in contrast to a composting toilet, gets worse the longer you leave it.

The small fan that draws fresh air into the toilet directs to a tube which is meant to lead through the roof to the outside air.  But I haven’t had a chance to do this yet and so its just exhausting into the toilet compartment.  And yet even with this poor arrangement there is still no unpleasant smell.  There’s a slight damp kinda musty smell, not unpleasant, that you get in cellars and caves.  But overall I’d recommend a composting toilet if you’re vaccilating over it.

I’ll write more about this soon, but to be going on with, here is a link to a video of the launching of Stillness

And here’s a video of her crossing Lake Cootharaba into a stiff breeze. The rattling you hear in the background is the flapping . . . → Read More: Solar boat launching]]>

Stillness on the Noosa River

I’ll write more about this soon, but to be going on with, here is a link to a video of the launching of Stillness

And here’s a video of her crossing Lake Cootharaba into a stiff breeze. The rattling you hear in the background is the flapping of the straps for the drop down clears.