Thanks to all for your comments. I should have explained that I am not interested in going fast - sailing speeds are fine for me. What I am particularly interested in is having a successful
electric drive system. A
generator would be necessary for me to have all the things I find necessary - aircon at times, a
water maker, etc, but I would like to have a lot of
solar panels and clean quiet simple electric motors (I currently have two
Perkins 4-236s). A rig makes
solar panels far less efficient than they can be - even the shrouds cut the efficiency of
panels badly, let alone the shadow effects of
mast and boom.
I have sailed for over 50 years, and love pure sailing, but for
Mediterranean live-aboard life the
sails are decoration except for any long (say over 24-hour) trips; and I don't make many of those a year (maybe 5). The rest of the time one wants a clean quiet time at
anchor and as few visits to a marina as possible. A big array of
solar panels and an effective array of
wind generators would make it possible to stay at
anchor for weeks with using the
generator just once every few days, or more often when aircon is needed (I prefer to use aircon only to cool a
cabin before sleeping when it's been a particularly hot day).
That's the basis for my interest in this overall approach.
I would then have a sailing rig on a
dinghy to get my pure sailing kick...