What will yachts and yachting look like in 2015?

Line handling as an x-treme sport.

I believe we are less likely to see major changes in the smaller yachts as the costs involved to install future-tech gadgets are so much higher in proportion.

Like I wrote earlier, the retired couple cruising their 65 foot trawler aren't gong to invest an extra million or three just to dock quietly or to eliminate the need for a better sound shield over the generator. And they certainly aren't going to spend another million to save $50K over their period of ownership.

The reason we see so many small boats with this stuff clagged on is because as a technology demonstrator it makes for a cheaper platform and when the publicity rush is over it can be removed and the boat sold off with conventional systems restored or it can be junked to preclude the embarassment of what if looks like in a couple of years.

A couple on a 65 foot trawler that needs a 2 MW system would be rare. a $100K system that lets them sleep in silence all right and saves them 4 gallons of inefficincy a night would probably be worth it to most people. Heck there are already a lot of people who live in sail boats with little solar panels to run some light bulbs.

You need to come up for a solid reason why more people will not be using these systems as they get cheaper (by large factors) smaller, easier to find and install, more trendy, more efficient, more environmentally friendly, more reliable, and fuel prices rise.

Although what you said is absolutely true you may have noticed a bit of a contradiction between your 1st & 3rd paragraphs.

Although there is an initial outlay, a lot of these cruisers (not the 65' and up so much as the 65' and down) look more on the cruising costs. On the ICW I see many boats that look like they should be put to sleep and there's thousands of dollars in solar arrays, wind generators and the like. As the boats get bigger they are usually more exact with their cost/benefit analysis and more long term in their thinking. So, is it possible that one day the entire roof structure of a large yacht will be some sort of fashionable solar collector? I'm not Gene Roddenberry, but I've seen a lot of things that my father would have never though possible. So I guess we'll just wait and see. (What's a man's average lifespan these days? )

No, not really any contradiction. Technology demonstrators are often scaled versions or built on off-the-shelf platforms that are affordable. There is little if any consideration given to the commericial or economic viablility of the demonstrator. This is quite common in the commercial and military marine industries.

True. I was refering more to the small boats where 'There is (also) little if any consideration given to the commericial or economic viablility' or so it sometimes seems. Boaters do love new gadgets even if they make no sense, they don't know how to use them and they're not cost effective. But who knows what inspiration will spring from some of those folleys.

As rare as a 2MW 65 foot trawler I would say ... looks like another strawman to me.

Sounds like a good marketing opportunity for you. Let us know how it works out.

I firmly believe that people will be using alternative energy sources for some applications in the future. I just don't believe for a moment that we will see any of the pie-in-the-sky stuff that is being passed off as the "future of yachting." Solid reasons for that? The same reasons we don't have flying cars, we don't have fleets of already exisiting high efficiency cars on the road, and nuclear power is not too cheap to meter.

Not bad looking tender. Too bad it costs about $25,000 just for the batteries to drive it at 15 knots for an hour before taking the rest of the day off to recharge.

While you are calculating the recharge time for that 2.5 MW battery pack we talked about earlier (I see you haven't posted that yet), tell us how deep a discharge we can get on those magic batteries and how that impacts the size and weight of the power pack needed to supply 23kW or 2.5MW for a reasonable length of time and how long the recharge is at what rate.

The Million dollars so they don't have to buy as much soundproofing wasn't in reference to the overpriced 1.8MWHr system that had been alluded to in the past? You put on a price and I worked backwards. Thats why it wasn't a straw man.

Also this isn't alternative energy, its efficient use of energy, its all going to be diesel powered still, except the solar sailers that we see already happening.

Also current Lithium Ion technology takes as little time to recharge as it does to discharge. At MIT they just made a battery out of LiFePO4 that can charge in second.

You don't need deep discharged for Lithium, its not nickel.

It is alternative because the standard is diesel shaft drive and diesel generators. We are not looking for a way spend a lot of money to waste more fuel.

Since you wouldn't or couldn't answer ...the discharge limit on those batteries is 66 percent ... that means you can only pull 2/3rd of the rating out of it if you expect it to last for any length of time. So increase the size, weight and cost by at least another third. Charging time? Think again about dumping back what you took out in the same time or less, where is that much power going to come from and if you have that onboard what exactly is the point in spending a fortune to throw away a good chunk of that power in multiple conversions to recharge the battery? Let me know when you find a shore power source adequate to do that as well. Charge in a second? I will check around for a gigaWatt plant to plug my yacht into When it needs a recharge. Power is power, or did you skip class that day?

You and Battboy ought to go into business together and sell these things to the yacht industry. In the meantime, how about answering some of the questions I posed instead of just tossing back little gems like "you don't need deep discharged - whatever that means? Give us some real information to chew on not just little marketing slogans and throwaway lines that mean nothing and provide nothing of technical value to evaluate the validity of your claims. Tell us how many horsepower we can pull from a 100kW battery pack (or Amp hours or whatever you want to use) for how long and how much power and how long it takes to recharge it. Tell us how much that pack weighs and what it costs. There is a ton of marketing hype available, don't add to the fog. If you want me or any other person in the business who has a say in what is used on a boat to become a believer, you are going to have to work harder than I have seen so far.

I'm talking about a diesel generator, not pushing the boat through water, well maybe a bow thruster, but the ship would still be run on diesel, and the generator would still be diesel. I'll come back to this.

You need to be more specific when you address a question. FYI its more like 90%, The Tesla roadster has 97% recovery, but lets just look at 90%. They also loose between 5 and 10% per month, I'm talking about storing a charge for a few hours, so yes add 00.05% to that inefficiency, congratulations.

My point with the MIT system that charges in secondS (sorry for my prior typo) is that the internal layout of the battery is important. My laptop discharges at peak power usage in about 3 hours, it charges in 2. The whole process is more efficient if it happens slowly, which is why you size your system correctly, it charges for an hour lets say, then discharges over 6, or 8, or 24, an individual cell can charge as quickly as it can discharge, but it can also go slower.

Take a look at the bottom curve here http://www.frontierpower.com/images/custom/makingsense-powercurve.jpg You will note a sweet spot, the idea is to run your engine right there until the system is charged to its sweet spot, and then shut your engine off and enjoy silent efficient power, and enjoy running systems on the safe and efficient DC power, Motors and light and potentially integrated computer systems. DC Can't travel down lines very well, but it sure is great at running things.

As for the deep discharge, you were talking about recovery rates, the deep discharge is something that whipes the memory of a Ni-Cad battery, I feel like its unfair for you to use the wrong word then criticise me for answering the question you did ask with real information rather than the question you meant to ask but failed to.

I'm not trying to sell this system, I haven't got the infrastructure set up to do so, I'm just trying to talk about what is likely to come down the pipes. If I had a specific set up made I could give you the specs off of it. Incidentally asking how many amps per kW is like asking how many pounds there are in a mile. When you go to talk about something, its really helpful if you learn what you are asking for first, otherwise you are just making noise.

Before I give up completely. Tell me how much power I can pull out of a given battery, how long it takes to recharge it and how much power it takes to recharge it.

You can supply the figures in any term you want, amp hours, kW, horsepower hours, BTUs, calories, Joules, I really don't care, as an "almost scientist" you should be able to rattle off a few good specs.

If not then please give it up, you are beginning to sound a lot like the air car guy.

Using current technology you load 100 KWHr on to a 650 kg system, if you use it within a few days you can pull off 95 KWHr. A comercial system this size can charge in two hours, if your powerplant is big enough (70 hp), a technology that has been made and tested in the labs, and is this size, can charge in about 80 seconds (6000 hp). The system will have about 1500 cycles before degradation sets in, if its cheap 5000 if its well made, more if you put a supercapacitor on to steady things out (something the size of a car battery will have about as much energy as a "C" cell, but really smooth things out, batteries like smooth). After the system degrades the batteries need to be recycled, there value is still very high at this point, and will pay for a sizable portion of the replacement system, with the increases in storage that we would expect to see (given the trend in battery improvement we have seen in the past) the system you junk might actually contain enough lithium to make several new systems, and may actually pay for the entire new system that you will be buying in 5 to 30 years depending on use.

Your diesel engine will need less maintenance.

You will need less soundproofing.

Edit: Totally forgot to look up Li-poly batteries.

So thats 100kWHr/s on a 500 KG system, You get 99.8 kWHr back with in a week, you get about 1500 cycles, but you only get 5 years. and it takes about 5 minutes to reach 90%. 15 more to hit 100%. Thin film systems can get in upwards of 10,000 cycles.

Well the buyer of the Yacht Tender didn't mind the price tag because you just can't do that with Lead Acid for any price...lol. Regarding the discharge- he does what would be considered a 100% DOD which is possible because the BPM will shut down the system with a 7% reserve in the cells so they don't totally deplete. His Pack is 144V / 140Ah and if you have access to a 16A wall plug it takes about 7-8 hours to completely charge the battery pack. He can do 5 knots all day long but the yacht tender is typically a ship-to-shore craft so that doesn't become any kind of problem.

This is a very interesting subject which I think should be preceded by what is yachting today ??

There are very few real yacht and sea lovers around and unfortunately the whole industry has been taken over by people who are spongeing on the fact that success means a yacht in Monaco, St Tropez or Porto Cervo where one has to be seen on the after deck. I suppose the same applies in the U.S.A.. But who can blame them when they are making big bucks.

Yachts are often designed by people who have never been to sea, by builders who have never been to sea and specifically for people who are at best uncomfortable with the sea.

Unfortunately, because of the ever increasing threat of the Green Politicos, very few berths are going to be built especially in european countries apart from the fact that berthing charges are and will be even more ridiculous in the futur.
Therefore to come back to the subject of 2015 I would have thought that yachts will have to be designed so as to be at anchor for a majority of months in the year.

I am obviously talking of 50 metres and up and therefore one has to consider a major improvement in crew quarters with facilities for gyms, cinemas and bigger spaces for the crew in general.
This can only be achieved if there is a major increase in draft to fit an extra deck (under the waterline).
Then we have to consider much bigger tenders as deeper draft is deeper waters and probably further out to sea.

The advantages are that the owner will have a real little ship capable of handling heavy weather (if he wants to go further than the ¨big¨ cruise being Monaco to Porto Cervo ).

As the yacht might spend a big amount of her life at anchor, there is definately a case for the assistance of solar and wind power and batteries to help the old generators.

In conclusion I would say that yacht designers have completely lost the plot. away with the purely cosmetic, shallow drafted, flimsy and in some recent cases unseaworthy yachts of today. If you want Caribean, take your 35 foot tender and go in.

Kind regards

Bee

I really appreciate hearing your thoughts coming from a different angle Bee.

For someone who bangs on incessantly about something they have no real experience of and swear is the gospel truth you would do well to get a bit of foundation knowledge first. The number of amps in a kW is a very simple calculation when dealing with DC. Volts x Amps = Power or V x A = W.

In case this is still beyond your comprehension it goes like this, if you know your voltage and your load you can divide the load by the voltage and get the amperage required to run it. If your load is 1 kW (1000W) and your system is 24V this would give you a running amperage of 41.6 A.

You have a good understanding of what a lot of this thread is about then.

This is what I have seen over the last, say fifteen years. I used to ask a friend at a large shipyard about the fact so many bad designs are built, but he said that it is what keeps the industry busy...

I have noticed today that even if there are a lot of second hand boats on the market, clients want something better concieved and ask for new designs.

Never picked up the boss with the tender I see.

And there you go again with the lead acid strawman. Give it up Battboy, this LiFePo one trick pony show has about run its course.

K1W1 I am familiar with an Amp thank you. However you introduced another variable to make it work, if I asked how many pounds were in a mile it would be different than asking how many pounds a mile of 3/4" chain weights.

Marmot, presumably the boss would be the one buying the tender, and as such would not throw a fit like a child about the limitations.

ETA: Also the MIT system that has gotten so much attention is LiFePO So no, thats not a one trick pony, at the very least it is a two trick pony, however you would have to be very arrogant to say that just because nothing new has happened in the last two weeks that nothing will happen.