Electric Outboards just not there yet?

Once solid state batteries are really available is when i think electric outboards will prove more popular.
I can get 12.5 knts with my tohatsu 3.5 and can keep going at that speed with an extra fuel can.
A friend was 6 miles from Falmouth and the wind completely died. His yanmar starter motor had had a melt down probably due to stuck ignition a day earlier.
He put his yamaha 2hp on his dingy, tied it along side his 36ft boat and 5 hrs later and a fair few tank top ups arrived. Couldn't do that with electric.
I have a 1.5kw mountain bike and totally love it. Would happily have an electric car if they were cheaper but boat propulsion uses so much more power so will stick with a 1996 2t outboard thats cost me nothing more than a spark plug and time for the time being plus the ice is usually fixable anywhere with a few basic tools
 
Steamkettle said:
Had my Epropulsion for 4 seasons of 5 month/year cruises around UK and Eire. I get 10 hours at a decent speed in the tender, recharging mainly from solar and I've never once had range anxiety. I contrast that with previous cruises where even finding petrol for the outboard was a challenge. Being to split the battery/engine has made rigging it much safer and made it easier to move the tender ashore. Also means I'm saving the weight of a 10 or 20 litre can of highly combustible fuel that needs special storage and handling. A thick chain secures the leg and battery via the transom with the battery marked 'useless without electronic key fob' which is then carried in my pocket. Maintenance is minimal. Yes, it was certainly more expensive to buy but depending on how much you use it it'll save money in the long run......plus all the cursing and bruised fingers that go with pulling that wretched starter cord.....
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I separate the battery from the motor as well as taking the 'fob' with me. Motor unit has a padlocked bar across the clamps.

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Edit. I was trying to attach a thumbnail picture.
 
Rappey said:
He put his yamaha 2hp on his dingy, tied it along side his 36ft boat and 5 hrs later and a fair few tank top ups arrived. Couldn't do that with electric.
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You’re crafting arguments to suit your opinion. It only worked because he had plenty of petrol, if he’d only had a 5 litre can like most folk he’d have run out.
On the flip side, someone with an electric outboard and 4kW of solar panels could have made it across the Atlantic quite comfortably
 
Rappey said:
...A friend was 6 miles from Falmouth and the wind completely died...
He put his yamaha 2hp on his dingy, tied it along side his 36ft boat and 5 hrs later and a fair few tank top ups arrived...
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I think there's something amiss here; 6 miles took 5hrs? That's only 1.2 knots which is incredibly slow even for a 2HP outboard. On my heavy (13 tonnes) 42' boat we get more like 2.5 - 3 knots with a 2HP outboard in the rubber dinghy lashed alongside. Even rowing the dinghy (so only 1/4HP or less - no sliding seat in an Avon...) I find I can tow the yacht at 0.5 knots or so (done it during the 3-peaks race).

Maybe your friend was fighting an adverse tide or had a very fouled hull? Or perhaps his outboard was knackered.
 
lustyd said:
You’re crafting arguments to suit your opinion. It only worked because he had plenty of petrol, if he’d only had a 5 litre can like most folk he’d have run out.
On the flip side, someone with an electric outboard and 4kW of solar panels could have made it across the Atlantic quite comfortably
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A five litre can would give five fills of my Johnson 4hp twin tank.It takes a American quart. So, if his 5 litre can was half full, he would get a fair distance.

My four stroke 4hp Suzuki, modified to 5hp by bending the butterfly bracket, took us from the Fal Malpas pontoon to Tesco's at Truro and back for 2.5 litres.
 
Chiara’s slave said:
A 2 stroke 8hp is a beast of a motor for a tender. Wish I still had one.
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A little smaller than average around the Caribbean I would say. It's what came with the boat. On my own, I can plane at 14kt with the cabin boy it drops to 12kt, but any extra weight and we are back to displacement mode and doing about 6.5kt...
One advantage of a motor this size is that SWMBO and I can just about lift the whole RIB+engine rather than dragging it. We had to do that recently on a stony beach.

The holy grail would be a tender/ob combination that can carry, on the plane, the same people who can carry it, up a beach.
 
Sea Change said:
A little smaller than average around the Caribbean I would say. It's what came with the boat. On my own, I can plane at 14kt with the cabin boy it drops to 12kt, but any extra weight and we are back to displacement mode and doing about 6.5kt...
One advantage of a motor this size is that SWMBO and I can just about lift the whole RIB+engine rather than dragging it. We had to do that recently on a stony beach.

The holy grail would be a tender/ob combination that can carry, on the plane, the same people who can carry it, up a beach.
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It would. It’ll be a while before that setup would be electric because of battery weight. My other ‘solution’ is disqualified as in no way could 4 lowland gorillas carry it up the beach🤣 We use it more as a kind of chase boat, for the smallest superyacht in the known world.
 
So far we've been good with rowing and sailing our dinghy around. Worked well all the way from Scotland to Cape Verde islands. Now that we're in the Caribbean, there have been some wind and current situations where a bit more power would be nice (for example, ferrying people to land on a windy day in Tobago Cays).
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With that, we're now looking for an electric outboard. We tested a friend's Torqeedo Travel XP with our 9ft hard dinghy, and that was clearly too much. Right now a bit torn between the ePropulsion eLite and the Temo 450. Talked with a fellow boater with an eLite on a very similar dinghy, and he was happy.
The only problem is finding something here in the Caribbean. Seems everybody feels the need to zip around with 15+hp.
Visited the Fort-de-France Decathlon today, and surprisingly they had a ThrustMe Kicker on shelf. But price 2x what it would be back at home felt a bit much.
 
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bergie said:
So far we've been good with rowing and sailing our dinghy around. Worked well all the way from Scotland to Cape Verde islands. Now that we're in the Caribbean, there have been some wind and current situations where a bit more power would be nice (for example, ferrying people to land on a windy day in Tobago Cays).
View attachment 189740

With that, we're now looking for an electric outboard. We tested a friend's Torqeedo Travel XP with our 9ft hard dinghy, and that was clearly too much. Right now a bit torn between the ePropulsion eLite and the Temo 450. Talked with a fellow boater with an eLite on a very similar dinghy, and he was happy.
The only problem is finding something here in the Caribbean. Seems everybody feels the need to zip around with 15+hp.
Visited the Fort-de-France Decathlon today, and surprisingly they had a ThrustMe Kicker on shelf. But price 2x what it would be back at home felt a bit much.
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A sailing tender ticks a lot of boxes for me. I remember Tinker Tramps well and rigid would work. One day....
 
bergie said:
So far we've been good with rowing and sailing our dinghy around. Worked well all the way from Scotland to Cape Verde islands. Now that we're in the Caribbean, there have been some wind and current situations where a bit more power would be nice (for example, ferrying people to land on a windy day in Tobago Cays).
View attachment 189742
View attachment 189740

With that, we're now looking for an electric outboard. We tested a friend's Torqeedo Travel XP with our 9ft hard dinghy, and that was clearly too much. Right now a bit torn between the ePropulsion eLite and the Temo 450. Talked with a fellow boater with an eLite on a very similar dinghy, and he was happy.
The only problem is finding something here in the Caribbean. Seems everybody feels the need to zip around with 15+hp.
Visited the Fort-de-France Decathlon today, and surprisingly they had a ThrustMe Kicker on shelf. But price 2x what it would be back at home felt a bit much.
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We used a Bison 88lb trolling motor on our Spindrift 11. It had a fair bit of power, I think we could get about 4.5kt out of it. I paired it with a 60ah lithium battery.
Once we had the sailing rig up and running, I pretty much stopped using it though. For longer/faster trips I tended to use the 3.5hp two stroke, and for less demanding trips sailing or rowing have become the norm.

The little two stroke is playing up so I might resurrect the trolling motor idea in the future.
 
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