Jimmy Cornell goes Electric, with a Cat

[Simon.Sails]

Originally Posted by Dave_S

A couple of things stand out to me on this.

Firstly, either Ocean Volt had terrible practical knowledge of their own product or they were deceptive about disclosing the real world benifits. I had dealings with them years ago and believe they are more than just deceptive.

In 1500nm, in all sailing conditions, on a capable boat that is in the top 5 or 10% of the ideal boats for demonstrating the abilities of OV equipment in had net losses of energy stores fro 95% to 20%. That's an extremely poor result.

The article says they replaced the standard prop with the better servoprop system on the port side, but according to a previous article, the main problem was the servoprop in regeneration due to seastate.

La Vagabonde has a new boat coming, a much faster trimaran with one OV system. If it doesn't work for them OV will have lost any chance of clawing back some of the credibility they lost with Jimmy Cornell's boat.

All of this has been discussed in this thread in great detail. I don't think OV has lost any credibility at all, it's JC that has lost (some) credibility when it comes to planning a feasible electric boat concept.

[valhalla360]

Originally Posted by Simon.Sails

All of this has been discussed in this thread in great detail. I don't think OV has lost any credibility at all, it's JC that has lost (some) credibility when it comes to planning a feasible electric boat concept.

This wasn't just some random nob buying their system. OV participating in what was effectively and advertising campaign, hyping a boat that was poorly designed will and should scare a lot of people away from OV.

If JC demanded it, OV would have been better served in the long run to walk away.

[BigBeakie]

It seems JC never knew his energy budget, and did not monitor his energy expenditure, and surprise surprise, used more energy than he produced. It is the skippers responsibility to be on top of that before putting to sea. Especially with new to him technology on a new boat.

It would be like heading to sea on a new boat without knowing how big your fuel tanks were and how much diesel you had onboard and what your engines consumed. Who would do that?

It is my understanding JC ignored advice from both OV and Outremer regarding having range extending battery charging as a backup.

I think it was poorly handled by all 3 parties, but ultimately it is the skippers responsibility, period.

I have enormous respect for JC and his accomplishments and what he has given to the cruising community, and in his defence, I know how easy it is to get blinded by the excitement of a new venture and neglect due diligence.....I plead mea culpa to that myself!

I trust there have been lessons learned all round.

[JustMurph]

I think something that needs to be pointed out is the the system was hardly a complete failure. When they did have good winds the system was able to keep the batteries topped up around the clock, exactly as you'd expect on a tradewind ocean crossing. It seems they got pretty unlucky having a lot of light wind sailing straight up and found the big (and somewhat obvious to everyone else) hole in their system straight up.

If they'd had a decent sized solar array, I'd be confident that they would have been completely energy independent in any conditions where the boat could still sail (even if too slow to regenerate a decent amount). On the rare occasions where there's no wind, there's no choice but to have fossil fuel backup. I don't think you'd need it very often.

[fxykty]

With only a 1KW of solar, a wind generator that needs 20 knots to really produce, and 700Ah @12V battery, with all the usual consumers and an electric galley with two people living aboard, we do not replace what we consume on most days when it’s cloudy or we’re sailing north (in the Southern Hemisphere). We run a generator every second or third day for a couple of hours.

I figure another 1KW of solar will take care of the daily deficit most of the year, but I can’t imagine how much more generation we’d need if we also had electric propulsion. Not only dealing with house loads (which is hard enough), but then double or triple that to account for propulsion. Not every day of course, but sometimes several hours of motoring, or a half hour of emergency power, is needed. Well, unless your Sean or the Pardeys, but those are outliers to most live aboard cruisers we’ve met.

A hydro generator would be nice to take care of passage loads, but since we have a boat that can attain high speeds and accelerates (and decelerates!) quickly, a variable pitch prop is necessary and for a Watt & Sea system that means their racing version - prohibitively expensive.

Regeneration using the propulsion system such as OV has great promise, but if it doesn’t work when a boat is going up and down in ocean seas than what use is that? Though apparently Watt & Sea do work in lumpy conditions - what’s the difference?

And of course, if you park up somewhere remote for a while then hydro generation doesn’t help with house loads. JC was planning a high proportion of sailing, unlike most live aboard cruisers, but then Sailing Uma showed that you need frequent shore power or a generator to provide enough house and propulsion power.

Not a lot of solutions yet that don’t cost a whole heap of money, as opposed to energy dense diesel.

[Dave_S]

Originally Posted by Simon.Sails

All of this has been discussed in this thread in great detail. I don't think OV has lost any credibility at all, it's JC that has lost (some) credibility when it comes to planning a feasible electric boat concept.

Come on, it was a total disaster for OV.

Anyway if we accept your premise, there is still only failure for OV. If Jimmy Cornell can't work it what hope has the average sailor.

[Dave_S]

Originally Posted by BigBeakie

It seems JC never knew his energy budget, and did not monitor his energy expenditure, and surprise surprise, used more energy than he produced. It is the skippers responsibility to be on top of that before putting to sea. Especially with new to him technology on a new boat.

It would be like heading to sea on a new boat without knowing how big your fuel tanks were and how much diesel you had onboard and what your engines consumed. Who would do that?

It is my understanding JC ignored advice from both OV and Outremer regarding having range extending battery charging as a backup.

I think it was poorly handled by all 3 parties, but ultimately it is the skippers responsibility, period.

I have enormous respect for JC and his accomplishments and what he has given to the cruising community, and in his defence, I know how easy it is to get blinded by the excitement of a new venture and neglect due diligence.....I plead mea culpa to that myself!

I trust there have been lessons learned all round.

As I understand it, they had an OV tech on the boat.

[JustMurph]

As much as I think the idea of having no IC engine generation is mad (if not dangerous), with a decent sized solar array (lets say 3-4kw) and the OV servo prop control issues sorted, I reckon they would have been successful. Keeping the boat moving when becalmed would still be an issue, but to a much lesser extent, and any time when sailing the solar would have been able to cover the house loads by itself.

[250224]

Originally Posted by Dave_S

Come on, it was a total disaster for OV.

Anyway if we accept your premise, there is still only failure for OV. If Jimmy Cornell can't work it what hope has the average sailor.

Disagree on both points.

Regarding "what hope .. average sailor": this technology is imo not yet for the average sailor. You need be prepared to spend more capital and be ok that some development still occurs. Black-white-failure talk leads to nowhere. Considering that you speak so favorably of JC you don't seem to have read the blog post where he ended with: The future is indeed electric! I strongly suppose JC would have learnt from these small initial hiccups and would have tried again were he younger.

[Dave_S]

Originally Posted by blu3534

Disagree on both points.

Regarding "what hope .. average sailor": this technology is imo not yet for the average sailor. You need be prepared to spend more capital and be ok that some development still occurs. Black-white-failure talk leads to nowhere. Considering that you speak so favorably of JC you don't seem to have read the blog post where he ended with: The future is indeed electric! I strongly suppose JC would have learnt from these small initial hiccups and would have tried again were he younger.

They are not small initial hiccups, it was a huge fail. They had to abort the event and return home at the earliest point in the trip, then sell the boat. Other than blowing up and sinking, you couldn't do much worse.

But you do agree with me that it's not workable 🙂

Don't misunderstand my criticism, I really want this to work, and I think it will to a limited extent in the future and I think it has it's place for some uses now. My criticism is of a company to be so out of touch with the abilities and limitations of their product to send a high profile sailer out and fail. They should have known exactly how it was going to turn out well before.

I just can not believe that a company could be fooled by their own propaganda.

[250224]

Please (re)read the blog post. JC sold the boat because of health (and age) considerations. And do you think he would write as positively if he were p*ssed off by his motor/generator supplier? Highly unlikely imo.

Maybe your expectations are correct with a Lagoon. But when you have much more influence on the build and specify what you want, you bear responsibility.

Regarding hiccup we won't find agreement

[Dave_S]

Originally Posted by blu3534

Please (re)read the blog post. JC sold the boat because of health (and age) considerations. And do you think he would write as positively if he were p*ssed off by his motor/generator supplier? Highly unlikely imo.

Maybe your expectations are correct with a Lagoon. But when you have much more influence on the build and specify what you want, you bear responsibility.

Regarding hiccup we won't find agreement

What are my expectations, the same as everyone involved, that they would succeed.

I don't think we will reach agreement on any points.

[David Ess]

Originally Posted by Barra

yeah cos theres no emissions expelled in building the boat is there???

sorry but this is just yet more hypocritical virtue signalling

the least emissions path by far would be to NOT BUILD ANOTHER NEW BOAT and make do with an existing one.

He might mean as compared to a new boat that uses diesel, as most do. Compared to them, this one is better, at least for fuss bugs fretting over carbon.

[David Ess]

I wish JC would test out the Alva Ocean Eco 60 cat that has 20 kW of solar and 260 kWh of battery capacity. Attn Alva Yacht company: If Jimmy doesnt want to, I would be happy to circumnavigate one for you. It would be good advertising.

[Adelie]

Originally Posted by fxykty

.....
JC was planning a high proportion of sailing, unlike most live aboard cruisers, but then Sailing Uma showed that you need frequent shore power or a generator to provide enough house and propulsion power.

Not a lot of solutions yet that don’t cost a whole heap of money, as opposed to energy dense diesel.

Uma did fine without a generator for 5+ years. The generator was acquired specifically so they could cross the Arctic circle to Svalbard.
Before that they spent 3yr in the Caribbean and crossing the Atlantic without regen or mostly without regen. My sense is that they did a lot of charging at marinas when they were working on the boat and at marinas anyway. Otherwise they were usually anchored out and depended on solar for house and traction.

Recently they have been spending a lot of time at high latitudes, and off season for a lot of it so, yeah, they were marina hopping.

Other than gasoline/petrol nothing has the near the combined benefit (energy density and specific energy) of diesel.
Nothing will replace it for the performance it provides. Some people are still trying to find ways to eliminate or minimize it's use for various reasons. People that are unwilling to accept the tradeoffs of using EP don't need to, fossil fuel are still widely available.

Uma originally went electric because it was cheaper than repairing the diesel. They did a DIY EP system.