Electric Main Drive(s)

[planetoftheapes]

Randy,

My 420 with just about every option including gennaker, 44K BTU air, watermaker, 21.5 kw genset, full electronics, delivered in France comes to less than 465K. I think the wost case would be repeat component failure/replacement by Lagoon with the hassels involved.
The hybrid technology has already been proven by Solomon and others. It's the electric control systems, multi-modes, regeneration mode control that I would bet will cause the problems.
I have complete faith in the motors, generator, battery chargers, inverters ect. Lagoon has been working with these for some time.
I beileve a brand new cat with all this equipment for under 470K is about as good as you will find period. I'd wager the base goes to 450K when legitimacy is established. This is alot of ship for the money. Get'em while their hot!

[RandyAbernethy]

PotA: I agree, resell value will be awesome... or really bad. Hopefully the prior, I'd love to see them succeed here.

[Intentional Drifter]

Leaving the matter of the hybrid drive out of the equation for the moment, the design of the boat has a number of interesting features for a cruising cat: A hard bimini, the ability to go from one side of the transom to the other without going through the cockpit or stepping down, all sail controls led to the helm, a raised helm in the cockpit with 4-corners visibility, and a very high load-carrying capacity (7100 lbs). The bridgedeck clearance is high and will have the gullwing shape that has been successful in the 440 for reducing pounding/slamming. The interior area is only 16 sq.ft. less than the 440 (467 vs 483) and the cockpit is actually a bit bigger (100 sq.ft vs. 78 sq.ft) than the 440. The waterline length of 40'4" (vs 41'10" for the 440) and the sail area of 1054 (vs 1236 for the 440) implies that the 420 is likely to be a bit slower than the 440, at least in terms of top speed, but the 440 has proven out to have a surprisingly high average speed. The 420 hull design follows much of the 440/500 features, both of which actually point pretty well, and very well for a mini-keeled cruising cat.

The galley design is truly the best I have seen among the production cats, as well as the owner version amenities. I have been very impressed with the thoughfulness of the deck plan and the ease of sail handling. Lagoon has even addressed most of my pet peeves (removing that silly teak toerail and putting the anchor handling back on the bow where it belongs).

I think these elements will make the 420 a desirable cruiser, all on their own. If they do end up pulling off the hybrid propulsion system as advertised, then the 420 may very well end up being the most desirable contemporary production cat on the market.

ID

[planetoftheapes]

http://reviews.cnet.com/Valence_N_Ch...-30602174.html

Look at the real life reviews of the Valence battery designed to power laptops. If they can't build a small battery like this, I wonder what would happen to their $2500 130 Ah battery?

Oh well, it looked like you could setup a Valence bank equal to 25% DOD (where the generator would start anyway) of the standard bank and save 1300 lbs on the transoms. 12 x 65 Ah Li batts at $16000 seemed a good price to take that much weight off the ends, especially if they last the way they claim.

Hopefully, A123, the maker of the Black and Decker 36volt Li power packs, will come through with a battery that actually works.

The L420 will probably work great right out of the box and not need expensive modification.

[redtwin]

When I first saw the Lagoon electric setup I was very excited and enquired about Sonic/Silette version for my little Prout. When I looked into it further I did come up with some basic issues. Having worked with marine electronics for sometime I quickly realised there may be some long term issues and pains with this setup in saltwater environment. Cruisers do tend to resort to motoring more often then not, this means long hours on electric motors. what is the MTBF(mean time before failure of these motors)?
This technology has been around for some time with electric outboards etc so I am pretty sure they have ironed out some issues, but I still would like to see long term costs and reliability figures before converting to it.
I did however think I could use my existing Yanmar in one hull while installing an electric in another...best of both worlds maybe..yanmar could also be used to generate enough power to charge batteries.

[redtwin]

Link to Silette's drive unit specs, reply I got from them stated 16hp is the biggest unit they can do:
http://www.sillette.co.uk/elect_saildrives.pdf

[Talbot]

20-30 hp electric motors have been used in the marine environment for quite a number of years without any serious issues. I would expect the propulsion/generation to be more of a problem, primarily because it is new technology whereas the rest is more mature.

[GordMay]

A properly applied industrial electric motor might be expected to have a Mean Time Between Failure from 25,000 hours to over 125,000 hours.

[mikereed100]

Footnote on the Silletes: I believe the 16hp rating refers to the size diesel they will replace. According to their website the largest motor used on the saildrive is 8kw (just under 11hp). They look like a pretty slick unit. Fisher-Panda also offers a saildrive unit as well as a rotatable pod motor that mounts underwater. Electric propulsion gets more interesting all the time!
Mike

[Talbot]

The rotatable pods sound interesting, you could do some really fancy berthing manoeuvres with that

[planetoftheapes]

With so much discussion of weight issues related to batteries, ect. on a multihull, I thought this quote from Nick Harvey of Lagoon USA would be of interest. It's from the latest issue of Cruising World. In response to catamaran weight sensitivity:

"At frist the premise was speed," he says, "but as hulls have evolved, they've widened. Even though they have a slower top speed, the boats can now go faster in rough weather and maintain faster average speeds on long passages." The payoff, Nick says, comes in "comfort, space, and storage capacity, especially for extended cruising."

This really makes sense to me. Traveling below theoretical hull speed is a low energy proposition. A barge does pretty well below hull speed. Energy requirement goes exponental above hull-speed although to a less extent for a narrow hull. It seems even thin hulled cats need a huge SA/displ ratio to maintain speeds above hull speed. By most nonsalesman reports (even see this months Lattitudes and Attitudes) fast catamarans still generally sail passages just near theoretical hull speed. There was a great article in CW I believe, a while back, answering the question of what kind of boat makes the fastest passage? Their conclusion was that only the waterline length was predictive of passage times not mono vs multi (of course you could push a Gunboat 48 to an 11 knot average but would you really want to cruise that way). You can't push a fast, over-powered multihull without constant pitchpole worry. Fast passages are only as calm and comfortable, for given weather, as your water line length allows. Read some of Bob Oram's articles.

I discussed the wide hull/good average passage speed issue with a multihull designer that makes a very lightweight, boxy cat with skinny hulls and he says wide, heavy cats can only be dogs period. I don't believe the tests of the Lagoon 500, 440, 410 and Sunreef 60 support his view.

1. Lagoon 410-S2 Esmeralda finished second on corrected time ARC 2005

2. L570 won ARC 2006

3. L500 quote from Multihull World:
To my surprise, even though I
wouldn’t call it a lively boat, it is
enjoyable to sail and accelerates
well. After several days’ sailing
aboard, I was particularly
impressed by its performance in
light airs: close-hauled, with
just six knots of true wind, we
were making 3 knots at a very
respectable angle to the wind. It
must be said that special care
was taken with the underwater
lines and the appendages, to
guarantee good performance on
all points of sailing, in any wind
conditions.

4. Sunreef 60 Mission, won 1st place in the Grand Prix Del Antlantico Race in a corrected time and 3rd in a real time! The maximum speed of 21.4 knots achieved by Mission (by the max wind speed of 42 knots) was a record and even exceeded the speed of Volvo 60 Cantabria. The average Mission's speed was 9-10 knots.

5. Mulit-World test of L440; As with all comfortable cruising catamarans,
the 440 needs at least fifteen to twenty
knots of breeze to come to life. Under these
conditions, cruising speed is an effortless 8-
9 knots, to exceed 10 knots needs more
wind. "We had from 10 to 30 knots of
wind and made Palma in 8 days from La
Rochelle.We were often at 11 to 13 knots (in
25 – 30 knots of wind, under main and gennaker)
with a record of 17.6 knots)".

Sorry I'll stop now.

Give me, low cost, lots of room, stability and a 7-8 knot average passage speed and I will do fine.

So load on those lead batteries and let's go electric cruising!

[Intentional Drifter]

"So load on those lead batteries and let's go electric cruising!"

I think somebody's starting to get excited! I couldn't agree more. I'm afraid I'm starting to begin a count-down to delivery date. I pity my wife.

ID

[RandyAbernethy]

I concur on the L420 layout. The 420 interior has to be the best 40' setup ever to bow. I might opt for a single head with a separate shower in the guest hull and more storage instead of the second head, but that's splitting hairs.

CAD models seem to show the traveler up on the hard top which is great (key safety feature on a cruising boat imho). The transom steps look a bit small and steep though. I would like to see a swim platform aft with chocks for securing the dinghy. Then you could get rid of the davits (which are often problematic) and go with a boom derrick (I can't believe that only Voyage uses this awesome idea).

She will probably be fast enough for great cruising. I have to ignore any "corrected" race times though. No one cruises on corrected time, you get to the anchorage when you get to the anchorage (and no one holds your spot because your corrected time says you got there before they did).

[Moby Dick]

"bridgedeck clearance....... will have the gullwing shape that has been successful in the 440 for reducing pounding/slamming"

Just like the old Prout design then. What goes around etc I guess....

Incidently, the 420 pictures show very short (OK - 'high aspect') keels: can they actually take the ground OK? Similar designs I have seen on hard standing have to have additional supports.

[jzk]

Originally Posted by delmarrey

One more thing to add, Trains (diesel locomotives) have been using this type of system for years. They can get more low end torque out of an electrical motor then with an internal combustion engine.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_...iesel-electric

And most larger cruise ships are also running generators that power electric motors.