7 years 7 seas - The boat
The sailing vessel for our circumnavigation
We found it in August 2014 in a small town in the southwesterly part of Germany just in front of the garage:
The prewoner bought the naked hull in 1995 and since then was building up the deck and working on the interior. He did such an amazing Job, I never could have done.
Then, unfortunately, he got sick and had to sell it as at was in 2014. The basic idea was to have a profound base on which we can build up a seagoing sailing vessel. Only things are old were it doesn't make a difference. Steel is not getting old over 20 years especially as the boat was never in the water before 2016.
And what is essential like engine, sails and rig we added in 2015 and 2016. So basically a pretty new, 20 years old boat with which we now are on the way around the globe. Current position is A Coruña, Spain.
Plaza Maria Pita, A Coruña, Spain
Gorgeous boat!
Thank you. Think so as well even as we have always some trouble with it. Today we realised that a gasoil pump is broken and gasoil went to the bilge. But I heard from owners of new boats also about troubles. So it is normal I guess. Always a lot of work to do.
When it comes to boats, the project list never gets any shorter. Good luck with it!
@bavarian59 what a beautiful boat so sorry for the first owner not being able to enjoy the work. Looks like he did an amazing job. How amazing to get a brand new used boat. So starting out with your idea someone was already working on it with you. bummer about the the gas. I plan on putting electric drive in my boat with solar wave and regen power so I don't have to worry about fuel on the boat. With the price of batteries and all the other components going down in price over the past couple of years it becomes more and more easy to electrify a boat. Where are you headed off to after Spain?
Thank you. Good idea with the electric drive. We still have gasoil/diesel and are not very happy about it. Might still be difficulty even with new Technology to produce enough power for an electric drive.
Beginning of next year we intend to sail further south, along portuguese coast. Then maybe Canary Islands. Not sure where then, caribbean or west coast of africa. Let's see.
Electric drive is easy to do now the tech is all there and you can do regen when sailing by having the prop turn under water adding power back to the batteries. 5 years ago it was expensive and difficult to do. Now there is so much more on the market with a huge maker movement building electric converted cars. Good thing in a boat you don't have to go fast so the requirements are better for boat use. With some wind power or sea gen underwater prop for generating electricity.
As normal if you get sailing stuff they like to make the price higher so it is better to get stuff that is from other systems like for the electric motor a motor out of forklift will work just fine. Even an electric golf cart can be converted to use in a sailboat.
I am planning on doing the Great Loop in America from the great lakes down the Mississippi and then back up the east coast and through the canal back to the great lakes. The trip is 9,000 miles and the cost in fuel would be around $7,000 so it is way better to invest in a solar/wind electric drive system. I can do it for way WAY less than the price of fuel for that trip.
There is a ton of batteries second hand like out of salvage Tesla cars and many other places. The energy storage costs are going down each year more new tech keeps coming out that will make it cheaper lighter and more efficient.
@allowisticartist I appreciate your enthusiasm but I think your expectations for an electric powered drivetrain are a bit unrealistic. First, although batteries are getting cheaper they are still very expensive in comparison to conventional diesel propulsion. Second, mixing electronics with salt water makes things even more complicated and even more expensive. It isn't impossible but it ain't cheap either. You will also need to be an electrical engineer in order to maintain the boat. Even finding someone qualified to do maintenance on the boat is going to be difficult. Third, I'm not sure about the size of your boat but I'm guessing it isn't large if you plan to do the Great Loop. Therefore size and weight are going to be serious considerations. In order to hold the amount of juice necessary to power the drive train AND all the other systems of the boat, you are going to need to allocate some serious space to a battery bank. If you've ever lived on a sailboat, you'll know that space is always at a premium. For an example of weight, my current boat has a conventional drivetrain and I carry 10 gel batteries weighing in at over 50lbs each just to power my house systems. That's over 500lbs and a big chunk of real estate. Finally, your aspirations of charging you battery bank using wind, solar, and regeneration are totally unrealistic. You have to consider where you intend to use the boat. Most places along the Great Loop don't have consistent sun or wind. You also won't be doing a whole lot of sailing in the confined waters of the inland waterways and rivers.
So what is going to end up happening is that you are going to dump a TON of money into a unreliable and underpowered drivetrain. Then you will end up having to install a diesel generator and run it constantly in order to keep your massive battery bank charged. In the end, you'll just have an inefficient version of the thing you were trying to avoid in the first place. Sorry to burst your bubble, but I've been aboard true electrically powered sailing vessels and they are neither cheap nor easily configured. Hopefully in a few years electric drive trains will be the norm, but right now (even if you use second hand components) the technology just doesn't make sense economically or functionally.
Well there are the weight of the 18650 cells I am building my battery packs out of have a much higher power to weight ratio of what you are talking about and I am 3d printing my own electric wind generators so that cost is almost null. The boat for the great loop is a smaller cat that is going to have solar all down the top so I can have plenty of power. The cost of solar has dropped per watt and I only need about 4kw of power on a surface that works as a roof for the boat.
This boat and his build is part of the inspiration for the project.
4k of solar I can get for a little over $3200 now I may get more solar and run a bigger motor with the surface space of the boat I am going to build I can run 10kw of solar that I can get for about $0.50 per watt. So I am going to have no issue having enough power.
My friend down in Panama built this boat him self as a working boat for his island to run to town for supplies.
It is an art project to me so I am in for a challenge. I have no expectations only having fun looking at what is possible when one decides to become there own expert and build for themselves. I know one can spend money and hire experts and all of that but then again people built boats out of trees and sailed the world with no fancy stuff. That being said we have a cnc router to cut the wood for the boat. I am also building plastic recycling machines to be able to injection mold parts I want for the boat. I have plans for a fully recycled material boat but that is a subject for a different time. Cheers.It's challenging but it might work. With enough space for solar, wind generator and sea gen power will be produced almost the whole day long. I guess you need lithium batteries for this purpose. Still expensive but costs are going down as well. Due to space issues on our monohull i have a small 300 Ah Lithium. So far it works really great.
@bavarian59 I can build my own packs for around $1.50 per cell and the prices keep falling on the tech. I am also building a powerwall and putting solar on my mom's house. There is no difference from running a house or running a boat. I know I have to look at the power to weight and how much I can float. There was a guy that built a wave powered boat and sailed it from Japan to Hawaii
So if you make a combination of these you can have more power to move than you will need. I like to do things differently than the herd. So thinking outside of the normal is more fun. I have not even touched on my Allowistic islands built out of recycled material that are floating self sustaining islands of abundance. More on that later.