I went for a swim last week and cleaned the hulls on the 18m proa. Then went for a sail and it moved easily in the light winds. No real changes to sailing set up since this time last year. We were achieving better than 80% of windspeed reaching.
Today we gave the electric motors a more thorough test, running them up to full power for a few minutes. I made a brief clip and posted here:
The chart at the end shows speed in kph. Converting to knots the top speed was 6.5kts. It is lower than calculated probably due to the ww unit being 120mm deeper than it should be and ploughing badly. I expect this will be corrected later in the year. At 4kW total power we got 4.5kts and 2kW gave between 2.5 and 3kts depending on the wind direction.
The design target was 5kts with 4kW and we might see that if we reduce some of the drag from depth of ww unit and the restraining ropes, which are now heavier than planned.
The ww battery is now being charged with a solar charger and owner plans to do the same with the lw battery.
__._,_.___
.