I have not fired up a petrol outboard for a moth now - not even in Katie L
Good summary D, I have found my range anxiety reduced by having 2 batteries – the only thing I don’t like about mine is the cost…. especially of spares – so far I’ve had to have one prop and 2 skegs! I think I might be catching the putty a little more than you….
I prop and one skeg here
I am not convinced that this will last as long as the Honda 2.3 has
now that is a tough little bit of engineering.
D
Not as many moving parts to break, so can’t see why not…….. (famous last words!)
D have you gyro stabilised the camera here as the horizon appears to be rock solid and movement between camera and boat would indicate its not attached to the boat. It would be a fine thing, even for an ex BBC camera man, to be able to row and keep the horizon level.
most old cameras have a little gel steady shot to take out some of the movement – it comes up as a shaky hand on the controls The previous camera gave up the ghost because the mechanism inside spent too long being bounced around on the bike and in the rucksack. That one lasted 18 months….. so pretty good for me
the modern ones, like the one being used at the moment, have more pixels than they record so they can stablise that way.
Is this a different camera set-up than you used above the bridge at Woodbridge? That one the camera movement — especially the speeded-up parts — gave me a touch of motion-sickness. Very disturbing. The camera? The frame-rate? Even some of the pans were hard to watch at full-screen, I had to reduce back to the small window to finish the film. It was just too-much…
**sorry**
Ted,
these films are just blogs – not good enough for big tellies. I see them more as moving stills. The proper films are a waste to watch in a small screen ona laptop… but these things have just been thrown together. Terrible light at times that day too. Autumn is coming.
Autumn is definitely coming. They’ve started to harvest the field corn here, and soybeans will soon follow. Strangely we haven’t had any rain for several weeks, and the forecasts are dry the next ten days. I expect they’ll start cutting and bailing hay, they typically need 4 rain-less days and nights to be sure it’s dry enough. (Damp baled-hay is a fire hazard when winter comes.)
Any films or vids always welcome….
You have convinced me with your real world tests that the Torqeedo is an impressive little outboard. However, the price with one spare battery is around three times that of my little Suzuki 2.5 HP 4-stroke. The lifetime emissions of the Suzuki likely don’t exceed the carbon footprint of generating the electricity to ‘refuel’ the Torqeedo (gas/coal/wind for the power grid or diesel on the mothership), so the enviro-argument is moot. The elimination of gasoline/petrol as a fuel carried on the mothership and the low-ish noise are very attractive features though. I wouldn’t but one today because of cost, but by the time the Suzuki is ready for replacement (possibly not in my lifetime), I suspect electric outboards will be the only option.
A number of interesting posts this autumn, thank you. I look forward to more news about your bicycle project, and what has happened to the famous duck punt.
The bike bits arrive on Monday I hope
the duck punt is beside the house…. I would like to sell it… any takers?
but I need to keep the rig for the dinghy
d
I agree about the price…they are one heck of a price…. quite a gift from Chris I would have said.
As for range…it was telling me that it would be happy to do 16 miles the other day at 4 mph…. how often do you want to do more than 16 miles in a dinghy. My arse hurts at the thought of it.
However, my experience with it has made me realise that some of the 2hp trolling motors (costing around £200) and a bike battery (costing £200) would be a good idea.
Having tasted the peace of the electric outboard I am an electric convert.