Thanks, Candice always makes me laugh!

Thanks

Thanks! You should be fine, I saw a 6.5m wide trimaran come in without any issues.

@@SailingElectra Ah, that's good to know. Happy sailing.

That's a very good question actually! I've become very weight sensitive to adding things to my boat, so I won't be the one to try, but yeah I imagine it would work as well as the extra wattage you get on bifacials. I suspect we'll keep seeing more innovation in this area.

The v-shaped hulls were designed to provide the lateral resistance in place of the keels.

@@PieterOskam I am, but only because I followed your advice! It's working so well, thanks for that!

@@LostYogi thanks for the tip, I'll add them. It's a Catalac 9M, weighs 5 tons, has a 14.4kwh battery pack and 3200W of solar.

@@SailingElectra Thank you❤

Thanks Rob, yeah I can highly recommend it, especially if you have room for a lot of solar!

Good to hear. I really enjoy it. I wasn't much of a water person, but I always wanted to live on a boat. I've become much more of a water person though :)

Thanks!

Ah great to hear, and yeah the plan is to head in that direction as soon as our new mainsail arrives.

We will be on Rab with our boat 15 july to 16 August. See how it goes, we can meet up for a lekker Braai and Beers

The Adriatic is Beautiful BUT those calm flat waters can quickly change with the Bora. Lightening and thunder and 200km winds. A good tip, chat to local fishermen they know the weather system well

Thanks for that. And yeah lightning does worry me. I have no idea what would work to protect it. I've seen some things and then see some people saying they make things worse and that lightning is impossible to protect against. Any advice would be great, at the moment my strategy is simply to not have the tallest mast around :)

Hi David, we're 5 tons. I know a much heavier boat that does similar speeds with similar power levels, so in my opinion drag is far more important than weight.

No, but it's typically very simple, just treat it like a layer of regular fibreglass except you don't need to add any more resin. It's not even really required, but gives you a great smooth finish.

Thanks! With no wind around 5 knots. The power draw goes up exponentially, so you either need loads of batteries, or to be happy with 4-5 knots.

It seems to do the job, so much so that I'm no longer terrified of docking! I need to do some measurements of angles and proper calculations to see how it really compares to wider motor spacing. I'll get onto that soon.

Thanks Fred, It's great to be back on the water. Have had a few day trips so far, but I'm anxiously waiting for the sails to arrive at month end. I'm a big fan of the hopyacht, but personally I wish they would add more solar. They could put an arch across the back with another 3 panels which would make it near perfect in my view. They have twice the battery I do, but I have twice the panels they do. Personally I think more panels wins but I guess it depends on the use. Hopping from port to port and plugging in when you're there is a good use case for more batteries. We don't plug in at all.

Thanks Peter, i really love my Catalac. Hopefully my mainsail arrives soon and I can actually sail it!

😂I can highly recommend it

She's just not allowed to wear it standing on the top deck or we'll lose all our solar!

@@SailingElectra 😅😂😂Good call!

Thanks Lisa!

Thanks, I really enjoyed that trip too

Glad you found it useful Petar

Thanks for the comment Claudio, good to know!

Thanks for that. Yeah it's been a fun project and I think electric propulsion makes a lot of sense for catamarans with the amount of space they have for solar. We're back in the water this Friday in fact, so I'll be posting more videos soon!

Yeah I think so too. My guess is that soon sailing will become a pure hobby like horse riding. To move a boat at sailboat speeds people will just use solar electric.

Yeah it's where the boat was when I bought it.

Yeah I've had it happen once that the one remote ran out of battery becausei kept it out of the sun too long. All I had to do was plug it into the cable from the motor again and it switched to wired control and wired charging.

I wouldn't have one just for myself either, but the price was right, there's no effort needed and we definitely save water!

Thanks!

That's a big boat, I imagine you can have a ton of solar panels! Unfortunately I don't know any experts on your side of the pond, though I'm sure there are a few. I do know an expert in Europe who is actually an American, if you want his details let me know.

Wow another saffa with a 9M, who would have guessed! You're lucky you can sell the motors to get some money back. Mine were dead so I got almost nothing. One thing to consider is outboards vs pods. Doing it again I would seriously consider pods so they're deeper in the water and further apart. Costs are about the same. Where is your boat?

@@SailingElectra Hey I switched to my boat identity. I know, right? Coincidence or Great Minds or what? As soon as I started researching I found your channel. Tomorrow I am off to Lowestoft on the North Sea coast to take delivery. I will be heading for Cowes to 'borrow' a whole lot of gear off my old ferro Endurance 35 (SV Rolling Stone). Then off to the Med via French canals. Where are you? I would so love to see your lovely Catalac! No name for the Catalac yet.

I haven't seen those. I have a washer onboard but it weighs a ton. I'd love to switch it out with something lighter. And yeah a dishwasher is a luxury, but a washing machine is a must!

Haha yeah clean bottoms are good for speed and so much more 😂

It's a Klarstein Emerald 5 slim

@@SailingElectra Thanks, sounds interesting, but in this place we have our dometic fridge Cheers Peter

😁

That's definitely a new one for me captain :D

They're great motors. I use the 12v 2.0 for my dinghy and it works so well in going to build a mount for it on the back of the boat to use as a backup!

@SailingElectra not a bad idea. I'm a firm believer in redundancy. I believe in a backup to the backup. Lol. I'm currently building a hybrid mini tug using the 5.0 as the motor. I'm using a small, quiet generator connected to one bank to kick in when batteries get low. I'm also using solar to maintain the second bank, which is all lithium. Got the idea from the setup bow fisherman use. It's a way to get that extra range on longer trips and also maintain a decent speed if necessary. Also useful when going up against currents. This boat is 26ft monohull. I cant fit enough solar to go 100% like you've done but I can be fully battery most of the time.

Interesting, I suspect this will be quite common to most electric boats, when size the system for the motors you have so much excess power on days you're not motoring. I'll have to find ways to use more power 😁

Pretty well pointless information with the price of solar panels today and lifespan/ warranty. oh no i've ( possibly/worst case) reduced my panels lifespan from 25 years down to 20 years, over 20 years... because they got slightly hotter than they already do every day all day sitting in the baking sun.

@@SailingElectra Out on passage, it's probably not a problem. Simply GO FAST AAHHHHHH! In harbour on a sunny day AC is likely a good option. Get a unit with a dehumidifying setting and it will make life pleasant on cool damp days too.😎

No it will not! Panels are 15-20% efficiënt The rest will warm up the panel. The environment will cool them down again. Effiency will go down whith higher tempo but that is full reversible....

Power wise I get 7 knots running at full power. The outboards cavitate if it's rough at that speed though, so I don't really go that fast often. If I had to do the build again I would seriously consider the pods as they're so much deeper in the water, but I'm happy enough with the outboards to not want to change them.

A wind gen could be a nice addition, but I'd want something light and easy to put up

@@SailingElectra Oh of course. I would add one near the middle on a simple locking L joint for the 2 positions (up and down). Since it needs to be put away when you are underway or it will cause a lot of drag.

The motors are 2 x 6kW (12kW) but to be honest I almost never go over 3kW, and I've never thought they were underpowered. The key to the system is the solar. If I had less solar I'd probably think the battery was too small. The Hopyacht 30 has twice the battery and half the solar but because I have so much more solar I can travel further without needing to plug in. On a summer's day I pull in 15kWh+ and that means my battery pack is pretty much always full. My solar panels alone can power me at 5 knots without draining the battery on a sunny day, so the battery becomes a buffer rather than a power source. On cloudy days a bigger pack would just mean more speed, but I don't mind showing down if I need to go further when it's cloudy. From this season I hope to be sailing as well. If I didn't have sails I'd consider a Honda 2200 generator which could move me at 4-5 knots as long as it has fuel, but with the sails I think I'm happy with no generator.

@@SailingElectra Thanks for the reply.

@@SailingElectra Thanks for that info. Being a fellow Saffa, I will probably go the same route as yourself. Where would one look for a good used catamaran?

No it needs to be held in to work, so if I dropped it, it would stop and I'd either have to get the spare or the wired remote.

I haven't done it yet, still using the old stuff. My plan are to either implement PyPilot (pypilot.org/) or the Bluetooth Autopilot being worked on by Pieter Oskam (play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sailtactical.autopilot&hl=en_US). If I go that route I'll definitely do a video on that. There's no way I'd replace the Autohelm box if it dies. There modern options seem so much better. The PyPilot integration with OpenCPN is a huge bonus.

You're exactly right! I'm going to be mounting the pulley onto a padeye with a solid backing plate! I've already paid for a new mainsail, so there's no going back there! I'll do some experimenting on the run of the mainsheet, and see if there's a way I can make sure it stays above those corners one way or another! I suspect you're right on the shading and sails too. In South Africa there's a few boats with parasailors which look very nice indeed!

@@SailingElectra whatever you'll do we will do it with you by heart. It's why I follow you in this adventure, because you do the things, even if it's difficult you always find a solution. You are an example for many of ours. Thanks for your singularity! And what about your arduino auto pilot? A video soon? Kind regards to the new sailors couple!

Thanks, yeah it's a scary thought. I'm bringing in a new rigger to check the whole thing out!