TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums British Virgin Islands New type of charter boat - BVI

You may already know about this, Beneteau Island Concept, but it was new to me. Cross between a monohull and catamaran, lots of solar, reasonably large battery bank. Think you'll see a lot of these coming to charter fleets. Of course they are not pure electric, there are two diesel generators to provide all the essentials of home but you could, possibly, have a BVI boat trip without burning any diesel.

A river barge in the Caribbean? Forgetaboutit ?

Wow! In my head I was thinking it was sail so when I clicked on the link and saw what it was - and the design - I just about spit out my coffee.

That thing is Fugly!

Maybe it makes functional sense - didn't really dig too deep into the details - but I just can't get past the look.

It does not burn fuel...except to run the generators that will help charge the motors if necessary??!! They tried this before several years ago and the boats burned more fuel to run electric than if they just ran the engines.I guess there is market for this...but power boaters happy at 7knots? Most sailors are happy with more than that ( certainly I am). Interesting to see ...

The new Leopard 4600 is available in an electric configuration that appears well thought out with two separate isolated drive systems so getting caught without power should not happen. The Moorings is not however going to take electric versions in their fleet. So far in following many of the new electrics they just are not working out that well. They often have lots of unique and difficult to get parts. Charter companies that have dabbled in electric boats have not been really happy and new electrics going into fleets are few and far between. You can get a yanmar worked on anywhere in the world. You can even flood them in seawater, clean them up and have them running again. That won’t happen with an electric boat. I have no doubt they are the future but I am not convinced they are ready for prime time. It might also be most are trouble free and doing great but owners with electric boats posting or blogging on the internet seem to have issues.

A few weeks ago, we were moored near "Sol", the Sunreef Eco 80 powercat with the solar panels all over.

Not only did they run the generator all night, for some reason that boat has a super loud generator whose drone could be easily heard 200' away.
Ultimately electric will be great, but way too much greenwashing and virtue signaling in the market at this point.

No, they are not for me either. But then neither is a Toyota Pius and they sell by the million

I wonder how some things manage to get past the spitballing stage let alone focus groups?