Man spent 200 days building a solar-powered explorer yacht that can run forever | Hacker News Reader

Man spent 200 days building a solar-powered explorer yacht that can run forever

supercarblondie.com

30 pointsrmason28 comments

The video[1] from the actual person that built it contains dramatically more info than this lazy SEO spam clickbait blog

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GB52wYgEa9A

He literately mentions in the video (1:55) that the solar panels can not power the electric engine but support it.

Clickbait article, that's not worth anyone's time.

Clickbait warning... The video that appeared at the top of the page (followed by a bunch of blank space, presumably blocked ads) featuring a superyacht is NOT about the yacht in the title, although it does also have solar panels.

There is almost no real information here, not even the name of the engineer. The pictures are credited to "true north yachts", and searching for this reveals a patreon that talks a lot about sovereignty and also youtube growth hacking. There's a patreon (called truenortharchive, not sure what it's archiving) and there doesn't appear to be any substantial information about this actual boat.

All available information seems to be in this youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bX5EraBZ0As

There are a couple of shots of the plywood construction, but no hard information. At one point he shows the camera the power control interface, and at another he shows the outboard motor, both of which seem to be off-the-shelf at https://www.epropulsion.com/

YT link https://youtu.be/KKypmuc2adk?si=qRcWWtSv30G5fj_m This is really interesting since I could see this as a drone platform that could loiter near a target or just provide intel.

"Yacht that runs forever without fuel" has kinda been done, many times.

With wind? Sure. With solar PV? Only recently. You're still going to need a watermaker to make fresh water, and consumables for it, along with food, but with enough solar, it is very compelling when you might have challenges sourcing diesel (whether financially or logistically). Scratches the self sufficiency itch to an extent, sailing solarpunk style.

(have yachting friends in the cruising around the world way, not the wealthy yachting way)

Yacht != Sailboat

Very big sailboat = yacht.

One of my dreams is to find dismasted catamaran with seized engines and re-power entirely with solar+batteries for local trips.

By my estimate whole setup would cost less than a single marine diesel engine.

It's pretty crazy that the article does not state how many theoretical watts the yacht has. It looks like maybe 4,000 watts from the photo of the panels.

I wonder how much battery storage it has. Would suck to only be able to use the sauna when the sun is shining at full blast anyway.

good thing about boats is that they can move a lot of heavy batteries relatively easily

The boat is marketed as being lightweight.

Relative statement.

It may even require ballast, which the batteries can pull double-duty for.

Water + batteries, lol. What could go wrong?

The guy who made it says it has a 6kW motor, but does not reveal details about his battery or PV array. Based on that number and the brief view of the motor, I'm guessing he bought this: https://www.epropulsion.com/products/electric-outboards/navy...

The video that the person made has the stats. (see further up, its only about 8 minutes)

From memory its a 5.4kw array with 8kw motor. At 400w it can (on a calm inland sea) cruise at around 3 knots. Top speed of ~9 knots.

Its made from plywood so its super light. he wants to take it across the atlantic, which I think is brave given that its not got any compartments(that I could see in the video), so any breech means it'll sink in minutes.

Brave or stupid ? What I could get is that he is a young fool looking for "freedom" where there is none to be found. The boat isn't even interesting anyway, it's a bit dumb to spend that much money on an inadequate power solution when a cheap refurbished ICE would have been just fine.

> cheap refurbished ICE would have been just fine.

I mean an outboard would do, but then you are limited by range, also its noisy as hell. Sure you _could_ install an inboard second hand cummings with 10k hours. but thats not cheap or easy.

So you're left with outboard motors. They are cheap and don't vibrate the entire boat, but they are still noisy. Plus they aren't actually that much cheaper to buy than electric.

but then there is the running cost, it'll be (at uk prices) about £3.50 an hour to run on diesel, vs £0 on solar.

Plus all the extra space for not having to install fuel tanks.

my issue is more that the hull is untested and doesn't look all that strong.

Sure, if you plan on running the boat as a way to make money the total running cost would make sense, but it's just a leisure boat so the financial aspect isn't really good to start with. It's just a way to have fun while burning money.

But yes the bigger problem is the hull, that clearly isn't ready for difficult situations and this is why I said that. If you just want to have fun it's not really worth it to spend all that money for mediocre capacity when you could have gotten a decent experience for much less.

I really don't get it, a sail boat makes much more sense if you just want to have fun without relying too much on a noisy motor.

Most important number is missing: how much did it cost to make?

18 panels is like $1.3k. Same for inverter. Battery stars at $2k for 15kWh, but I'd go for used car battery, so perhaps $6k for 60kWh, much less if you got means to drop battery yourself. That leaves you with propulsion. While electric motors are pretty cheap, marine ones still seem at rip off. DIY solutions from China start at 3k and complete outboard is like 15k.

So overall I'd say for $10k for power and another $5k for motor.

Infinite scrolling blogs are disgusting.

Especially when it's so resource intensive that it makes my music skip, and then the page becomes unresponsive when I try to back out of it.

Forever. Or until your charge controller dies. Or your batteries fail. Or your plywood yacht hits a storm.

The inanity of over fitting your design to one particular function and ignoring all others and then pretending you've achieved something significant. It really is a hallmark of this particular ideology.

That's why I admire your hookups on the front of your car for oxen harnesses.

We do have tow trucks for a reason. Nuclear submarines are only limited by how much food they can carry and the overall endurance of the crew. Theoretically...

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