PocketShip.net

Thanks for the tip!
I’ve seen the propane outboards.
They are very rare over here however. So I didn’t consider it seriously.

In this covid time everyone seems to “switch” to water sports as almost every outboard is sold out!

I had planned to buy the new epropulsion motor for which they are advertising hydrogenation for sailors to recharge the battery. However I could not get a response from their dealers. Perhaps the new product has hit delays in going to market. Perhaps they’re having trouble of some other kind being Hong Kong based.
At any rate I figured if they were unresponsive when I was trying to buy the product that this not bode well for post purchase support.
So I bought the torqeedo which was in my doorstep in a few days.
Haven’t used it yet.

[email protected] wrote:
How do you manage the motor's tiller? I saw an ePropulsion video, and it looked like the tiller would not swing up very far, not enough to clear the transom skirt.

As I wrote to you - unfortunately only now - in a PM, this is quite possible. But you need a movable motor mount. In my opinion, this has less to do with the motors than with the special shape of the mirror on the Pocketship with its oblique angle and the curved mirror. This looks very nice, but has disadvantages when it comes to mounting the motor. On my Mercury, the tiller also rested directly on the transom.

With the E-Propulsion it works, even if the tiller is close above the transom. You don't have to use the motor tiller to steer though. The engine runs fine straight ahead while you steer with the tiller of the Pocketship.

Regarding the new epropulsion: Recuperation only works above a certain speed. I have doubts whether the Pocketship fulfills the condition sufficiently and would not get my hopes up.

Regardless, I think an e-motor for a small boat is a great thing. Which one you take is a matter of taste.I can only speak about the Epropulsion, which I use on two boats: the Pocketship and a 6.50-meter (21.3 ft) dinghy cruiser. Tested on one battery, it makes more than an hour's run.For a sufficient speed of just over 7 kilometers per hour (4.5 miles) on a lake, the Pocketship only needs about 300 watts, which can be used for well over four hours. That's at least about 30 kilometers (18.6 miles). I checked Epropulsion's technical specifications in practice, and they are halfway in line with reality.

We did a multi-day hiking trip on a river with the larger dinghy cruiser with a second battery and the solar panel on board, and cruised electrically for up to 8 hours a day without completely draining the batteries. With the fast charger, a battery is charged in the port in a good three hours, with the normal battery over night in a good seven hours.

Hi Karl,

Real interesting. I think the e-outboard is "on the brink" of taking over the fossil fuel outboards completely.
In most inland situations it would be perfect. When dealing with tidal currents now and then it might be risky I guess. This is regardless off the very reliable "start 'n run" characteristics of e-propulsion of course.

I'll stick with the fossil outboard for a while but as soon as it improves a little bit I surely get into electric propulsion, even if it's just for the noise.