Patrick's Sailing Blog

Just some links to companies\products\articles

• ASMO Marine Electrical Sterndrive motors (installation docs -pdf)
• ECycle Marine This is a an electrical motor with a Kubota generator on top, kind of an all-in-one solution
• OSSA Powerlite electrical propulsion motors they also have gensets, controls etc..
• Solomon Technologies Electric Wheel  Read through the pages at the links... good read
• Agni motors - same inventor as the LEMCO motor
• Diesel/Electric Propulsion for Sailboats thread on BoatDesign.net, best part of that thread is actually by a guy from Avante yachts and its basically a cut-n-paste from their electrical propulsion page.
• Cruising World Perpetual Motion article by Tim Murphy (Executive Editor of CW) published in 2005 says the Solomon system costs $40k (gulp) to install including the motor, batteries, genset, etc..

Other Lists

• PJBEll.com
• Jim Kerr

Thoughts\Questions:

• What are the benefits\tradeoffs of brushless motors?
• Wikipedia Article on DC Motors Sounds to me like brushless is a must-have in the motor
• How do you evaluate companies service\parts network?
• Regeneration (using the motor to charge when sailing) seems like an obvious must-have and would seem that it eliminates the need for a tow water generator
• Voltage - These systems all seem to use high voltage DC which changes the battery bank quite a bit (its now deadly) you then have a DC to DC converter to drop it to 12VDC for the house wiring (SSB, lights, etc.)