My initial diesel lesson was impellers, quickly followed by a bad exhaust elbow, cranky instrument panel, faulty sensors, overheating cooling system, vapor locks, wobbly engine mounts, and various lesser gremlins. Every docking was an act of faith, and every weekend a new opportunity to embed grease under my fingernails and smear my blood on the cabin sole. Thousands of dollars and three years later I was ripe for a way to free myself from the tyranny of my diesel.
I found the electric motor converts and joined that small band of fossil-fuel rebels. It may have been a conversion more emotionally driven than intellectual; but, I was hooked.
I studied and surfed the internet for a year while slowly indoctrinating my dear wife. With her grudging blessing I began buying parts, for I had determined to build my own system from scratch. After months of unsuccessfully playing engineer and tweaking a sort-of working electric system I discovered Electric Yachts. My hard won knowledge convinced me I needed a professional, turnkey system. Although there are several companies offering various groupings of components, the one piece drop-in unit combined with a good price made the decision to use the Electric Yachts unit easy.
Although I received my system in April, Mother Nature thwarted me with record high water until July. Since I was replacing the prop and shaft seal at the same time as the motor I did have to have the boat pulled out of the water.
Three days were devoted to ripping away all the old equipment, then one bright morning I started at 8:30 am with just a bare prop shaft resting in the cutlass bearing. I installed my new Kiwi, composite, three blade prop in about one and a half hours, then the new PSS shaft seal in just under an hour. I hoisted the Electric Yachts motor aboard, adjusted the mounts a couple times, shimmed the unit to true it to the prop shaft and drilled the four new mount holes. I screwed down the lags, securing the new motor to the diesel bed and tightened down the coupling connecting the prop and motor shafts. This took about an hour and a half to complete.
I did a few boat contortions running the two control cables from the cockpit to the motor and plugged them in. Since the batteries were already in from my first electrical attempt all I had to do was connect the positive and negative cables to my master switch. By 3:00 pm I was powered up and spinning the prop.
The maiden voyage was a success! The only problem came when Admiral De Anne discovered our top-end speed was 5 knots vs. the boat’s hull speed of 6.2 knots. Since we were not drawing maximum amps at full throttle I determined the new prop needed more pitch. Lucky for me she demurred and allowed me to defer the plunge into murky Lake Monroe to adjust the prop pitch with a solemn promise to make the needed change on the hard in Mobile. I have added 3 degrees more pitch and anticipate discovering the missing 1.2 knots in Mobile Bay as we hurry south this January. The things we do for love!
