Aphers

The good quality batteries are safer than carrying petrol around. But the cheap knock offs are potentially very dangerous. If going the electric route, you need to know what you're doing. Correct cable sizes, good quality connections, and appropriate fuses are essential. There are many stories about fires caused by lithium batteries. In every single case these are poorly built or installed, and almost always a volatile chemistry like LiPo or NMC, rather than the much safer LiFePO4.

Will Prowse is an excellent resource and has helped countless people, myself included. There is definitely a lot of junk out there, I wouldn't buy any sort of lithium battery without doing thorough research first. Building your own from cells is the cheapest and most reliable route. I've done it twice now. It's not rocket science and anybody who is capable of building a boat is likely practical minded enough to take on such a project.

Will Prowse is an excellent resource and has helped countless people, myself included. There is definitely a lot of junk out there, I wouldn't buy any sort of lithium battery without doing thorough research first. Building your own from cells is the cheapest and most reliable route. I've done it twice now. It's not rocket science and anybody who is capable of building a boat is likely practical minded enough to take on such a project.

I'm sure you get what you pay for. Build quality was my main concern about the trolling motor I had. Perhaps if you ring it off in fresh water after every use it would be ok. If and when I try this again, I'll be looking over the new motor carefully and where possible upgrading all the plated mild steel components for stainless. I paid £100 for the motor (secondhand but unused- I think they are more like double that new) and £260 for the battery (in 2020... lithium battery prices have fallen swiftly since then). So overall far cheaper than a Torqueedo or ePropulsion, and the little battery has been useful for other things too. A friend has put together a similar system but with a bit more thought and effort. He has the battery in a watertight box with good quality connectors and a Bluetooth battery monitor, so that he can check his much charge is left. Added to the cost but it has made it useful enough that he no longer uses his petrol outboard. By the way it's pretty easy to cut down the shaft on a trolling motor, on mine it was just fibreglass.

Why not just buy a 12v trolling motor? Then you only need four cells. Of course lower voltage means you need to deal with bigger currents, bit on these motors it's never going to be anything massive. Mine was the most powerful 12v available and it drew 53A.

That's a lot of money for a battery. My lithium battery was cheaper than that, and gives nearly twice the useable capacity at about half the weight.

I used a Bison 88lb motor on my S11N, powered by a 60Ah LFP battery. Pros: quiet, reliable, instant power including reverse. Happily took the dinghy to 4.5kt. Battery gave an hour of endurance at full power. No fuel smells, costs, spills, or mixing. Relatively cheap to buy. Cons: Not any faster than sailing, nor much faster than a motivated rower. The cheap non-Bluetooth battery has no way of telling you how charged it is (by the time the voltage starts dropping, it's nearly flat). Build quality on the supposedly saltwater rated Bison was very flimsy compared to any petrol outboard. Lots of plated mild steel components, plastic transom clamps. No easy way to secure the battery against theft. Biggest problem of all was the connection to the battery. I just had eyes crimped on to the motor cables, and I fixed these to the battery terminals. No weatherproofing of any kind. Inevitably things get splashed or dropped, corrosion sets in, and you start getting hot connections and power loss. I chopped the end of the cable and crimped on a new eye several times. I'm going to resurrect the idea, but I will choose a smaller motor with lower power requirements. That will make it easier to source suitable waterproof connectors. I will mount the battery in a box with a battery monitor, and make sure it has a strong point to lock it to the dinghy.

I really like the idea of rubber/foam inside the fire hose. I'm in the middle of making some changes to my Spindrift and am about to go on to my third set of pool noodles. So I'm getting about a year of full time use from them. This time around, I'm going to try making up a sleeve to go over them, as I have an old yacht mainsail to dispose of. It should help protect against UV and rough docks taking chunks out of the foam.

Not being one to opt for obvious or easy answers, my Spindrift 11N has, over the past three years or so, sported three different masts, five sails, a boom, a sprit, a yard, and a wishbone. This all came about after running out of time and money on my build. Being located in the north of Scotland where appropriate donor rigs are scarce and materials to build one to plan were hard to source, I initially adapted the only rig I could find, which came from an OK class dinghy. I used the OK mast, with a sail from a 420, and a boom made from a section of broken mast. In theory it was almost exactly the correct dimensions for the boat. In practice, the very heavy section OK mast was a bit of a nightmare. It weighed around 7kg and was almost impossible to step unless conditions were very calm. It was impossible to climb around it to get to the bow because the weight aloft made the boat so unstable. The 420 sail was also in very poor condition, so I later had a sail loft modify the original OK sail by adding an eye, which made it fit the slightly cut down mast. Didn't solve the stability problems though! Fast forward a year and a chance encounter on a beach in Martinique. I come away with a partial windsurf rig. Four piece mast and a 5.5m² sail. Used loose footed, this became my go-to rig for about a year. It was fairly practical and performed well, but holding the sail out on a run became a bit tedious. The shorter, lighter, mast transformed the stability of the boat though. A friend then gave me a sprit rig which looked good but had a very flat cut sail and didn't really work well at all. I later used the mast from this rig, plus sections of the windsurf mast, to try to create a tall but light mast so that I could use the OK sail again. But the resulting mast was simply too bendy and lost its shape as soon as I put on halyard tension. So I binned that project. Next upgrade was when a friend found a wishbone on the beach, which I added to the previously loose footed configuration. Now we could really sail! Performance was good on all points of sail, and I could add a purchase to the sheet, reducing the loads to a comfortable level. I used this rig for another year or so and was very happy with it. But the sail gradually began to suffer from UV damage, and became increasingly baggy. And setting up or putting away the rig was a pain because the wishbone, which is close to head height, needed to be lashed in place every time, which was awkward. These things are designed to be set up lying on a beach, not within a boat. And now on to the latest rig: a chance encounter with another cruiser, a swap for a box of beer, and I now have a lovely, crisp, unused, tan brown sail for a small gaffer. It's only 4.3m2 (compared to 5.5m² for the windsurf). I hastily lashed something together, flying out as a standing lug using a broom handle as a yard, and without a boom. Early days but so far I am very pleased with it. The sail can be raised or lowered in seconds. Luff tension is easily adjusted with a downhaul. The short yard is very easily stowed. It's all just effortlessly practical. Of course windward performance isn't quite as good, and the loose foot means high sheet loads as I prefer not to have a block whipping around on the clew. But I think these compromises are worth it. All in all, it's been an interesting exercise messing about with this little boat and the different incarnations of the rig. No doubt it would have been easier just to have built to plan in the first place, but where's the fun in that... Original rig. Note the bundled up excess sail. Photo taken in Menorca, Balearic Islands. Windsurf, with wishbone. Surprisingly good. Photo taken in British Virgin Islands. Current rig- standing lug. Excuse the lack of luff tension in this photo! Antigua.

Hi Tim, thanks for asking. Sadly the big boat didn't make it through. But we are afloat again on a different boat, and we got the Spindrift back! I've just been experimenting with a standing lug rig on it, I'll post about that when I get round to it.

We did the crossing a couple of years ago. Look us up when you get to the Caribbean!

Great posts, thanks for sharing. What was your finished weight? And how are you getting those kinds of speeds from a 2.2hp?? I can get to about 6.5kt with my 3.5hp... I've done over 7kt, but only under sail.

Looks good. It's very hard to put a value on this. The market for people who want this kind of busy, but don't want to build their own, is going to be pretty small. I spent about £800 building my 11N (using a donated rig to keep the cost down), and it took three months of every evening and weekend I had. I enjoyed the process and I enjoy using the boat, in part because of the satisfaction of having built it myself. I've also incorporated a few design details to suit my needs, and gained the skills that allowed me to repair it when it got hit by a motorboat. But to sum up... if you'd been offering this for sale back when I was about to build mine, I'd likely have been happy to offer you at least £1000, and I would have got three months of my life back... Maybe someone else would offer considerably more. Certainly if you add up the materials and factor in the labour, it would likely cost £4000 or so to have one built professionally. Good luck anyway...

You're not far off the mark! Finding out that the dinghy was ok has marked a real emotional turning point. It's looking like the damage to the big boat is essentially similar to what happened to the dinghy a couple of years ago, just on a far larger scale and involving fibreglass rather than plywood. The islands have been very badly hit. There's no water or power just now, but relief efforts are well under way. Some drone footage shows the part of the island where our boat is- it's pretty tough to see a place we know and live reduced to rubble. Many yachts flipped upside down in the mangroves. We were lucky in some ways. You can spot our boat about 3:30 in to this: https://youtu.be/IhxOM6hp_6Q?si=Wgf2I5IuGH0gtqu9&sfnsn=scwspwa

As I'm sure everybody will be aware, the east Caribbean was hit a few days ago by an extremely powerful hurricane. Earlier, stronger, and further south than any previously recorded. With gusts of around 190mph, it was touching cat 5 as it made landfall in Carriacou. Which happens to be where I left my boat for the summer. It's very early days and we don't know the full extent of the damage. And obviously at this stage all efforts are focused on helping the islanders who have lost almost everything. Around 85% of homes are thought to be uninhabitable and power and water supplies are disrupted. Anyway, through what has been a brutally difficult experience, I've had one piece of good news. A friend on the island sent me some pictures of my boat, and my Spindrift 11N is still safely strapped down on deck. Absolutely amazing. I had resigned myself to never seeing the dinghy again. It's lost a few lives now- crushed by a motorboat, adrift twice, run on to a reef... but it lives to sail another day. And just the boost I needed right now.