R&C Electric Leopards

[Jeff]

Tony,

thanks for sharing all of this, did you get a sense that Moorings/R&C will be offering the Powerlite system in other Leopards such as the Leopard 46?

thanks?
j

[TonyWest]

Well, Gang, Miami's all but over now.

It was a nice day today - sunny, and pretty warm. Again, lots of visitors to the boat. Met some CuruisersForum compatriots - fun!

Tomorrow and the next few days we're doing demo sails.

Basic response to the boat and the concept was pretty good. Quite a lot of press interest also. I'm quite worn out!!!

Tony

[TonyWest]

Jeff:

Moorings didn't announce anything, so I can't comment for them.

FYI - the standard Leopard 40 and Leopard 46 hulls use saildrives, whereas the standard Leopard 43 is shaft. My E43 is shaft.

I know that Glacier Bay has electric saildrives, or perhaps it'd make more sense technically to deploy an E40 or E46 configuration as a shaft design.

I think that the OSSA Powerlite system you'd need for a 40 or 46 would be identical to that on my boat.

In other words, there is no technical barrier to prevent putting an OSSA Powerlite system in these other hulls - it'd just be a matter of deciding shaft vs. saildrive. If saildrive, then it'd be good to actually test it.

But anyway, this is a Moorings business decision - please ask them. Let me know if you need a name.

Tony

Originally Posted by Jeff

Tony,

thanks for sharing all of this, did you get a sense that Moorings/R&C will be offering the Powerlite system in other Leopards such as the Leopard 46?

thanks?
j

[TonyWest]

Well, George, time will tell.

The electrics on the E43 are very simple. The base crew have already swapped a motor out "unsupervised", and they really don't need to mess with any of the systems.

The motors are sealed, and do not require any service.
The gen only requires an oil change every 500 hours and that's it.
The DC electrical system is very simple.
The rest of the boat is the standard R&C electrics.

The whole advantage of this diesel-electric design to The Moorings is simplicity of operation, simplicity of design, and reduction of maintenance.

But, I'd be the first to admit that, while theory's great, experience will tell.

Tony

Originally Posted by sailvi767

Tony, I am wondering how you feel about the Moorings ability to maintain the system. I am a long time Moorings owner. They have big problems at the Tortola base with electrics. Just getting them to fix simple items like a broken tach is like pulling teeth. When they do fix electrics it is more often then not jury rigged in some way or improper parts are used. The more complex the boat the bigger the problem seems to be. The 4700 with the genset and air is an excellent example. The Moorings has had to replace many of the gensets because they don't do proper oil changes and jury rig repairs. They also don't have any records of when they do oil changes ect.. Do you believe they can keep this system up in charter?
George

[Jeff]

Just heard from Moorings, diesel-electric is available on the 46.

thanks
j

Originally Posted by TonyWest

Jeff:

Moorings didn't announce anything, so I can't comment for them.

FYI - the standard Leopard 40 and Leopard 46 hulls use saildrives, whereas the standard Leopard 43 is shaft. My E43 is shaft.

I know that Glacier Bay has electric saildrives, or perhaps it'd make more sense technically to deploy an E40 or E46 configuration as a shaft design.

I think that the OSSA Powerlite system you'd need for a 40 or 46 would be identical to that on my boat.

In other words, there is no technical barrier to prevent putting an OSSA Powerlite system in these other hulls - it'd just be a matter of deciding shaft vs. saildrive. If saildrive, then it'd be good to actually test it.

But anyway, this is a Moorings business decision - please ask them. Let me know if you need a name.

Tony

[TonyWest]

Hi, Gang,

well, Miami was quite a blast! Basically, I sat on the boat for most of the show and just yakked with people who came aboard. Of course, some were completely unaware that mine is a diesel-electric boat, but most knew and were interested to poke around and sit and chat about how it was going.

Surprisingly, the biggest hit was probably the electric ballpoint pens (they flash) Glacier Bay gave me to hand out to people. Saw waiters in restaurants using them later at night!

There was a lot of press interest, and several tours of press came out on demo rides afterwards. The systems worked without a hitch (always a good thing!) and the writeups seems to be coming out pretty positive.

The boat is currently in Fort Lauderdale -- GB folks are doing the prop testing I mentioned earlier. Apparently it's going well (I'm in UK at the mo) and I'm looking forward to seeing the data, particlarly from the different types of folding props and how they compared to fixed.

All in all, a fun experience. THANKS to those of you from Cruisers Forum who came up and introduced themselves to me - nice to meet you. I think next boat show I'm going to hand out cards with the CF URL on them!

Cheers, Tony

[Redbull addict]

This has been a real interesting thread for me. Thanks for taking the time to post and answer questions. Will there be any representation in any form in Oakland next month?

[TonyWest]

Originally Posted by Redbull addict

This has been a real interesting thread for me. Thanks for taking the time to post and answer questions. Will there be any representation in any form in Oakland next month?

I actually don't know - though I'd predict that Glacier Bay will be there at least, since it's just down the street for them. I'll ask.

Tony

[TonyWest]

Propeller Testing

After the Miami boat show was over, Electric Leopard was moved up to Fort Lauderdale. Engineers from Glacier Bay spent 8 or 9 days testing the performance of the boat with various types of propellers, both fixed and folding.

As a result of this testing, I decided to fit the boat with two Flex-o-Fold Standard 3-bladed folding propellers (17x11). You can find more details of these props at the Flex-o-Fold website: Flex-O-Fold 3 Blade Folding Propeller for Racers and Cruisers

Using these props, we get just a hair under 8 knots when running at full power. I have not had the opportunity to test these props under sail yet, but I'm looking forward to the opportunity next month when I take my family down to Tortola.

A lot of data was collected and is still being analyzed. One of the general realizations from that data is that the difference in energy needed to drive the boat at 8 knots vs. 7 knots is very considerable ("Duh", I can hear you say). Slow down a bit and go much further.

Tony

[TonyWest]

Well, since Miami, we've had a couple of gremlins put in an appearance.

Starboard Motor Fault

After all the demo sails at Miami, and the extensive and grueling prop testing in Fort Lauderdale (during which the boat was really exercised a lot), we had a fault on the starboard motor (port continues to run fine).

After diagnosis with Glacier Bay, it was found that a component on the motor control electronics board had failed.

The good news was that this was actually a problem which GB already knew about. In fact, GB already had an updated revision of the controller circuit board and was preparing to ship two out to me when we had the failure.

The fix is to replace the controller board, a relatively simple procedure which takes an hour or so. Off to Tortola on Monday.

Generator "Low Fuel Pressure" Warnings

Another thing that's come up from time to time has been informational warnings that the generator is detecting low fuel pressure. Not a fault condition, but a concern nonetheless.

We decided to go after this one, and discovered a leaky connecter in the fuel system where air is bleeding in to the fuel line.

Let's see if our fix has now taken care of this one.

Generator Cold Start "Reluctance"

Sometimes, when starting the gen from cold, e.g. the first time in the morning, the gen will stall. Not every time, but sometimes. A couple of retries usually overcomes this.

This typically occurs when the gen is started from cold with load applied (e.g. battery charger and water heater(s)).

If you trip the breakers on the loads and start again, no problem. Then you can immediately set the breakers again.

I understand that this is because the energy required to both turn the diesel over and power the loads is higher than usual and when the diesel motor is just spooling up to its low power point, it passes through a low-torque point or something so it sometimes stalls.

Glacier Bay is developing a firmware fix for this, which will just buy the motor a little time to get up to a higher rpm before the load is applied.

---

Three comments:

• I remain impressed by Glacier Bay's willingness to go above and beyond the call of duty to make sure that gremlins are found and killed absolutely dead. Thanks, in particular, to John McCall-Taylor for diligence and follow through.
• The fact that the the GB system is designed around a number of Field-Replaceable Units (FRUs) makes repair easier. First, the fault is diagnosed down to the right FRU, then the FRU is swapped out. Simple, hardly rocket science, but very effective.
• The OSSA Powerlite family is controlled by firmware -- which is upgradeable. As time goes by, GB continues to upgrade the firmware on my boat, so my boat is getting better and better! This is rather a nice thing...!

[TonyWest]

Oh, I forgot one more minor thing:

We noticed the boat was quite smokey after Miami. When we checked, we found that there's a little cover plate in the exhaust system which had worked loose through vibration.

Solution: Retightened the plate.

It made things a little messy in the gen compartment, but it's easily cleaned up.

[TonyWest]

Originally Posted by Redbull addict

This has been a real interesting thread for me. Thanks for taking the time to post and answer questions. Will there be any representation in any form in Oakland next month?

I checked - they'll be there. Tony

[Redbull addict]

Originally Posted by TonyWest

I checked - they'll be there. Tony

thank you!

[TonyWest]

Well, Jeff, I can't speak for them so you'll have to ask The Moorings that question directly.

There are two contacts I'd point you to:

• Peter Wiersema is in charge of Leopard sales. His email is peterw@mooringsbrokerage.com.
• Simon Carey is a technical director for fleet operations, and he's been the main Moorings person on the Electric Leopard design team. His email is scarey@mooringsnet.com.

Both of these guys are straight shooters.

After talking to various people, I know that the main issue is that L40 and L46 boats use saildrives, whereas the L43 is shaft drive.

GB does have saildrives in the OSSA Powerlite family, so, in theory, it's simple to install these in place of the standard diesel saildrives.

Alternatively, perhaps it's possible for the L40 and L46 to be configured with shaft drives, in which case the same system as on my E43 would work just fine.

Either way, it's not a GB issue; the decision would lie with The Moorings (and Robertson & Caine).

I'd guess that customer demand would influence the decision.

Tony

Originally Posted by Jeff

Tony,

thanks for sharing all of this, did you get a sense that Moorings/R&C will be offering the Powerlite system in other Leopards such as the Leopard 46?

thanks?
j

[jjtctaylor]

Tony,

Do you consider the OSSA system ready yet to be the sole auxiliary power unit, ala monohull ? In other words, reliable like the old iron genny ? I noted in the other diesel- electric thread, the bane of DC power units has been and continues today to be the controller cards and matching firmware. It is no small coincidence that Solomon Technologies acquired Technipower AND Power Solutions Inc. Not just for expanded markets.

High power controllers and firmware are not as well developed to the point of automotive performance reliabilities. GB is expected to see gremlins for years. Just ask the Siemens and Rockwell engineers. Stuff like Solomons previous restrictions for cable length using pulse width modulation controllers is typical of industry growing pains.

GB is even a little deeper by integrating other hardware into these flexible units so wondered your opinion to run on one genset and one motor. Am I likely to start on every ignition and can I go with some power instantly ? Or do you think a modest if not small battery bank availiable for instant backup is more prudent. Give some time for systems to start and/or resolve their power up in a controlled manner.

Just looking at the component reliability equation for where to apply robust systems as back up. Or might you suggest an outboard motor ? (Ha)

JT