You probably don't have time to wade thru the rest of this nonsense, so here's the skinny:

I intend to scratch build an ultra-light epoxyed plywood pontoon boat with a deck area of about 7 ' by 14' on 16 ' pontoons.
The craft will be powered by two 24V DC motors. The power will come from eight 12V Deep cycle marine (lead/acid) batteries that will be charged by solar panels and small vertical axis wind turbines.
The system will be split into two separate, isolated units
with one motor, two pairs of batteries, 2 wind turbines and solar array for each side.

The craft itself is still on the drawing board, there's some details left to work out but they're minor.
The current design displaces over 2200 pounds with only a 12" draught.

The plan is to take this boat from as far up the Mississippi as she can navigate down to New Orleans,
relying only on the solar and wind generated electricity she can create on board.

Sunday, October 4, 2009

About the boat .1 (general dimensions)

As the design stands so far, the boat will be a scaled down version of
a standard pontoon boat.
The overall length will be 16' 10" from the bow to the end of the rudders, and 7' 6" wide at the waterline.
The pontoons will be of laminated plywood with epoxied joints and coating and connected by 5 laminated trusses attached to bulkheads in the pontoons.
The deck will be 7' X 14' with two 1' 4" x 7' 4" storage lockers I can stretch a hammock between.
The canopy will be fabric over a wood frame a little over 7' X 9' with roll down soft sides. I'm not crazy about the canopy in the illustration and it will probably change.
There will be two home made wind turbine generators on masts at the bow and 2 solar panels on the roof of the enclosure.
The size and output of the solar panels will depend on the budget.
The electrical storage will be four 12v lead/acid batteries that will power two 24 volt electric motors.

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