Question:
Electric Pontoon Boat, HELP?
i am seriously considering a project to equip a 21' pontoon boat with
electric power. it seems a natural mating in many ways, and meets
many of my requirements.
a possible implementation is a pair of electric (3HP) trolling motors
mounted at the port and starboard sides of the stern. steering
could be accomplished with differential inputs (e.g. starboard motor
fwd / port off, or starboard fwd / port rev for a tight turn).
based on my experience with electric trolling motors, i can get 2hrs
/ motor at full power with a top of the line 12V deep cycle battery.
i am assuming i could get 4 hrs at full power with 2 similar motors
and 4 batteries in parallel. estimated top speed is 4 - 6KTS.
any comments ? has anyone particiapted in or heard of similar designs ??
pls reply email, as this may not be a particulalry "popular" thread
in this group
Answer:
- We'll happily discuss and debate about darn near
anything that floats, and some things that don't! If it's something weird
like this, it'll probably get even more attention. That's one of the
reasons this group is fun.
- Pontoon boats can be very dangerous. About 18 years
ago on a lake on Vancouver Island, B.C., several handicapped people
in wheelchairs were drowned when the summer camp pontoon boat they
were on capsized while making a turn under power. The boat had been built
by local Lions Club members, using old jet fighter external fuel tanks
as pontoons. Needless to say, the student camp counsellors operating
the craft got the blame for "improper operation", while the well-meaning
but obviously mis-guided local worthies got off scot-free. I wrote
a letter to the local RCMP detachment before the inquiry, and never got
a reply ... I'm still irked by what was probably a cover-up.
Quite simply, if a pontoon should become completely submerged, e.g.
due to the centrifugal force exerting a rolling moment during a turn,
the boat immediately capsizes. So it must be designed to NEVER, EVER
be completely submerged, and then it's safe (on small sheltered lakes,
anyway).
I don't imagine that electric trolling motors would impose excessive
rolling moment (!!). But those pontoons had better be big enough ..
- Of course, that was a homemade pontoon raft with (probably) improperly
designed bows on the pontoons. My neighbor when I was growing up (who had
been running pontoon rafts down the Maumee River and out onto Lake Erie since
at least the 1950's) said that his first steel pontoon raft handled rough
conditions poorly (submerged bows wouldn't come back up) and he had steel
plates (similar to the spray rails or deflectors on the bows of modern
aluminum pontoons) added. While the pontoon rafts were obviously out of their
element (as are many of the small runabouts that people run out there), they
would get him out and back safely under moderate conditions.
I had an aluminum pontoon raft in the late 1970's (1969, who knows the brand)
that was capable of ~25 mph. While tight, full-speed turns in a chop were not
exactly its forte, I was never able to provoke any seriously bad behavior from
it. If the bow submerged (due to wave action, as I could never get it under
even with full-lock, full-throttle turns), the "spray deflectors" on the bow
would immediately pull it back up.
I rented another one down in the Keys a few years ago and ran it out to the
reef in 3-4' swells with chop and wakes on top. This one was only capable
of ~15 mph, but it displayed no particularly bad behavior under these
conditions.
I do remember one that rolled over a couple of times when I was a kid, but
that one had a wrought-iron rooftop sightseeing deck installed on a 20'x8'
pontoon raft ...
Anyway, it really sounds like the pontoon raft that capsized was either
very poorly designed or overloaded or something.
