# electric wakeboard boat



## Electric Surf (May 17, 2012)

I’m planning to convert a wakeboard boat from gas to Electric. Plan is to take an approximately 20 foot long fiberglass wakeboard boat, rip out the approx. 3600 lbs 5.7L gas V8 and all unnecessary ice components and install a DC motor in its place.

“Wake surfing” if you haven’t seen it can be viewed at this youtube link
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KY3n7wfUtKo&feature=related

The boat will be purpose built for wakeboarding, wake surfing, and slow cursing eliminating most of the boats high-speed travel.

When these types of boats are being used for Wakeboarding and wake surfing the boat is required to produce a large wake. This is typically achieved by adding weight to the boat via inflatable water ballasts, lead weights, sand etc or by lowering a “foil” or “wedge plate” attached to the transom of the boat pulling the boat down giving it the same affect as weight. Since in this application weight is a good thing, Lead acid batteries are an obvious choice.

Boat propellers come in all pitches and size so once I’m done the conversion I can dial it in even closer to my desired performance with a prop change

I am a Canadian journeyman electrician and apprentice power line technician with a decent amount of experience in welding, auto mechanics, and fabricating. 

Once complete the boat will live all summer in the water at a dock where a power source up to 100amps at 240V AC can be installed. 

Other then getting a donor boat, stripping it out, making up an electric motor mounting bracket, coupling the motor to the propeller driveshaft, hooking up a controller, a charger, and filling it with batteries what else is there ? 

The donor boats original gas engine would have produced about 300 H.P. and 370 lb-ft of torque making the boat capable of approx. 44 mph (71 kph)

I plan on only traveling at 10mph (16 kph) for wake surfing and 22mph (35 kph) for wakeboarding and rarely hitting higher speeds

Does anyone have any idea how to calculate the correct motor and size I need ?

A big 13 inch series wound DC I’m guessing?

Let me know what you guys think of my ideas and throw out some tips or advice if you have any!


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## Electric Surf (May 17, 2012)

here are some examples if anyone is interested

TRANSLOGIC EPIC 232se Electric Sport Boat
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pP-YHWq1cI

100% Electric Natique
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UbTAbLadB0

1974 Glastron Bayflite V174
http://www.evalbum.com/4144


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## jk1981 (Nov 12, 2010)

These are 200+Kw boats, right, and they're pretty inefficient loaded up like they are? How much of that power are you using to stay up on plane, I'm guessing about 1/4 of it, 50kW seems like a ballpark guess. How long do you want to wakeboard for in a day, an hour, maybe two? Let's say an hour, that's a 50kWH pack assuming you get all the capacity and discharge it fully. You're discharging at 1C so lead isn't going to give you all of its potential capacity (google Peukert), you might get 60% of it and you'll not want to go to 100% depth of discharge, maybe 90%. Now your pack is 50/.9/.6 = 93kWH for 1hr wakeboarding at 50kW. That's, 2750kg (6000lb) of lead needed to play for just 1hr. Plug your own numbers in if I'm off the mark but it's still going to be a *huge* battery.

Why bother? If you use the boat so much the gas is too expensive then you'll not be able to charge it fast enough or pack in enough lead to make it work for you. Sorry to seem negative, if you just want a cool electric boat project then feel free to ignore me and go right ahead, I'm sure it'll be great fun! If you're looking to save money on fuel why not convert it to natural gas or diesel?


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## Yabert (Feb 7, 2010)

The EPIC 232se boat seem to have a 60 Kwh lifepo4 battery.... that is 20-25k$ battery.

My first impression about this project is: Take all this money (35-50K$) needed to build a such kind of boat and build an awesome and useful car!

You can probably easily burn 20-25K$ of gas in few years with a car, but it's can be harder to do this with a boat.


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## Ams_AK (Jan 24, 2011)

I like your idea, electric boats are cool. Electric speedboats even better.
We are converting the glastron you linked to, getting pretty close to making our first splash.
If at all possible (budget, time) I would go for Lithium over lead and use the ballast tanks and or wedge plate like the original boat would. This leaves the boat much more versatile for all kinds of use.

As for how many kWh of battery you need, well its a squishy number. I checked the vid of wakesurfing and a few related vids. Saw the world champion put in a performance run of 2 1/2 Minutes. Even with two buddies and if you are all pretty good at it, it would be hard to spend as much as an hour at the wakesurf speed..what with falling over, laughing, switching places and talking about how cool your electric boat is. Before you know it, lunch time at the dock while your batteries suck on that 100Amp pipe you want to install. If you are all fit enough you could go out for session 2 later in the day..

Using the above logic we went with 28kWh of LiFePo4, although for us waterskiing is an extra, and slow cruise through the Amsterdam canals is the prime target. (yes this makes as much sense as a 4WD monster truck going grocery shopping for soccermom). Our pack is about 330 kg including the boxes and cables.

" Other then getting a donor boat, stripping it out, making up an electric motor mounting bracket, coupling the motor to the propeller driveshaft, hooking up a controller, a charger, and filling it with batteries what else is there ? " 

Sounds like a plan to me. Doing it in that order also means you dont need all the $ right away. Just start with your donor of choice and game on.
Warp 11HV, Warp 13 or Kostov 11 - 13" are all interesting choices, but since speed (and high RPMs) doesnt seem to be your thing the non-HV 13teens might indeed be the better fit for you. Also xtra ballast for your wake 

Are you looking at a sterndrive model (Volvo penta, mercruiser)? We made an adaptor plate for our Kostov 11" that is tailored for a Volvo Penta Bellhousing which is used on the FordV8's. This bellhousing is still an on-the-shelf part. Our coupler was made by Charlie at evcouplerconnection dot com, using the (spring disk) damperplate from the original engine. If you go this route you are welcome to all our fitting and dimension info..might save some time and $. Drop us a line if you are interested.

Have Fun!

AK


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