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A while back I blogged about the DSe Hybrid yacht, a cruising motor-boat that used electric motors coupled with a pair of small diesel generators and a bank of batteries and solar panel array. The boat could steam along under diesel or electric power alone and provide power indefinitely for living “on the hookâ€.
If you [...]
With the “Green†Emmys now behind us and the success of Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truthâ€, there seems to be an increased awareness of the environmental challenges we are likely to face in the coming century (at least among Hollywood’s elite). It has become “cool†to drive a Prius Hybrid. In reality driving a hybrid [...]
I am big fan of Ernest Hemingway. To me the man himself was like a character in one of his novels (even though this is romantizing it quite a bit as this brilliant writer lived a tumultuous life and eventually committed suicide in 1962). Besides writing, Hemingway was a consummate traveler and indulged in all [...]
My very first outboard motor was a 25 hp Evinrude 2-stroke that I used with a 13-foot Boston Whaler imitation skiff as a kid. That old 2-stroke was noisy and smoked profusely when you first turned it on but proved reliable as it would generally start with a few pulls of the rope (or ten [...]
In a recent post I wrote about modern outboard powered catamarans as a more efficient alternative to planning hulls for cruising under power. Recently one such design, the Glacier Bay 3070 Isle Runner, won the Innovation Award in the Inboard and Outboard Cruisers at the 2007 Miami International Boat Show. The award sponsored by the [...]
The cover story of the current issue of Passage Maker Magazine is an article on trailerable trawlers. In a previous post I wrote about voyaging motorboats and how most production motorboats are built for speed and luxury instead of seworthiness or cuising comfort. Although saltwater fishing boats have much better seakeeping abilities than your average runabout or cruiser, accomodations are usually minimal and fuel [...]
Ocean voyaging in small boats has long been the exclusive domain of sailing yachts. This is primarily due to the fact that most motorboats are extremely inefficient. Most production motorboats have planning hulls so-called because they “plane” over the water rather than plow through it. The problem is that it takes a lot of power [...]
