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Everyone complains about the noise of outboards and as a result are flocking to the way more expensive and shorter range electrics, I’m ok with that as my home is net zero and pretty much totally solar powered.
Don’t come back at me about pollution from my little outboard running a gallon of gas every weekend, the pollution from creating just one lithium battery and rare earth magnets is way more that fifteen years of pollution from my little outboard, and charging those batteries from the grid, (high percentage coal powered) creates way more pollution. Your fight should be with the cruise ship companies wasting 10,000 gallons of fuel oil, ( maybe per hour), or the airlines, 8 gallons of fuel per mile, or the 10% of older or non compliant cars that create 90% of the pollution in this country. Or the 80% of the homes in the us with little or no insulation, or energy saving appliances or energy saving measures taken at all. ( I’m only guessing at the cruise ship and airline fuel usage for example only to make a point).
When we had our TI’s, (had to sell because of health conditions, bummer), I don’t think anyone actually caught on to what I was actually doing and why with my fancy hybrid twin honda outboards with the super high pitch propellors, ( had to hand make them because nobody sells anything like that).
I looked very deeply in to electrics and battery/ solar tech and calculated that any electric propulsion out there didn’t have either the range or speeds I need for offshore use in the keys, ( we were avid scuba divers, mostly in the keys, where we had a second house).
Another big problem is everyone only ever talks about outboards and their max horsepower and speed, and all are judged by this. Unfortunately pretty much all outboards are very loud at max speed and rpm, and I didn’t want anything to do with that noise.
Since our main use was diving the coral reefs off key west, any of which are 5-15 miles off shore we needed a means to get out there. Since we were diving underwater, visibility is critical, and any wind over 10mph kills underwater visability, so we only ever bothered even going out when the winds were 3 to 7 mph, ( which happens to be around 70% of the days down there).
Yes you can own your own speedboat, ( we did for a while, ( 24ft searay), or take diving charters to go out to dive, but that amounts to around $1000 dollars a day for 4 people, and if you go out weekly, (I would go out every day if I could), all becomes pretty costly.
Given the vastness of the keys my design criteria was, (we needed):
1: a safe boat that we were confident would be strong enough if any instant storms came up, (a common thing down there)
2: if it takes more than an hour to go the ten miles or so out to the reef it’s not worth going.
3: had to work equally well no matter what direction the wind is coming from, as well as more typically nearly no wind at all.
4: had to be fuel efficient, ( we had many $300 dollar per weekend fuel costs with our Searay). Our goal was between 60-100 mpg, most outings our fuel costs were around a buck in fuel, ( measured).
5: we wanted 100 miles per day range, and 300 miles range with extra fuel on board, if we ever did any multi day stuff, ( never did any multi day stuff though, ( I like sleeping in a real bed, lol). That comes out to 10 hrs at 10mph, ( our normal cruising speed, with the wing sails of course).
6: boat had to have the ability to point around 10 degrees off the wind, (upwind), and when downwind 10 degrees off the rear and still maintain my desired cruising speeds. ( the entire reason I developed my wing sail stuff).
7: had to carry 4 people, ( normal for us when diving), plus tanks and gear, (usually towed behind on an inflatable dingy). If we had more people, they would hang on to the dingy or tow behind dingy in a string on either rigid or inflatable kayaks, with our TI as tow vehicle or mother ship. At times we had as many as 8 people, ( but never went way out under those conditions obviously). (800 lbs on board capacity). Or tow other TI’s ,( which we did a lot).
8: had to be quiet so we could talk in a normal voice, ( should have been #1). The Honda with it’s underwater exhaust at just above idle is very very quiet, ( thus the reason for the ultra high pitch props). No sails up at minimum throttle with 2 people on board in calm conditions, the boat went around 7-8 mph, ( because of the super high pitch props). Watch any of my dozens of videos displaying that, ( all with live mike).
The points I’m trying to make are yes electrics are great, but battery and solar tech are nowhere close to where they would be useful to me and the circumstances I would need to be viable at least for me, ( maybe 15-20 years out the situation may change).
So I came up with a viable solution, ( that nobody seems to understand), and nobody has taken the baton to further develop the concepts that I presented over the years, and documented very well on this forum.
Unfortunately for health reasons I had to give it all up.
But I haven’t seen any furtherance of any of my concepts, things like hydrofoils, wing sails, super efficient motors, planing hull mods, etc.
I’m very disappointed that the tri-power concepts that were invented by hobie and their tandem island line of boats hasn’t been exploited further. Using the sails, and pedal drives, along with auxiliary propulsion all together at the same time, ( as I did) to make one of the greatest inventions I know of, ( the TI) even better.
There is no other boat on the planet either for sale or on anyones drawing boards that can do what a TI can do, ( I proved all that out and documented everything). It only takes a little ingenuity elbow grease and a little engineering knowledge to turn these great boats into something very special, ( thanks hobie).
Don’t wait for Hobie to develop this boat into something special, It’s already pretty much perfect as an artists pallet to build on and expand to whatever you can dream up, (I’ve proven that in spades).
Pretty much all the mods I did didn’t cost much at all, ( I designed and built most everything in my garage for next to nothing). Anybody else can do the same, sure some ideas may fail, but thats how we all learn, (by doing). To be honest, my greatest fun was trying out and testing all the crazy inventions, trust me I had many failures, but how else do you learn.
I’m especially disappointed that to the best of my knowledge nobody has pursued the wing sail concepts that I developed and proved out way back in 2012 or so, sure I had to spend a couple years reading up on wing sails and how they work, and how to design and build them, but in the end it was all worth it, as it changed everything for me, and made all my dreams come true.
The best $200 dollars or so, ( in materials for the wing sails), and a few weekends in the garage that I ever spent, (I always designed and built all my own sails, why buy something you can easily make yourself, ( with your wifes sewing machine that she never uses, lol)
That’s all
Btw, I love all your posts.
FE
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