the “escapist” boat : an “energy maker” Petrel 33

Escapism is the avoidance of unpleasant, boring, arduous, scary, or banal aspects of daily life.   (wiki source)

 

if I apply this definition into sailing cruising activity, my thoughts became :

  • be independent,

  • live at sea

  • avoid crowd and noisy marinas whenever you want

  • widen the range of your cruise to wild shores

  • explore scarcely populated areas.

 

 

To do this you need to set up your boat properly; basically what you need is:

  • have a big energy storage on board, or to be smarter

  • generate on board the energy you need for a comfortable cruise

there are basically two ways to achieve this result:

  • use your engine as a daily battery charger, thus needing a decent amount of fuel on board

  • set up all the stuffs you need to produce the energy you need avoiding to use the engine to achieve the result

of course I aim at the second option.

 

and, ta-dah, here it is a “escapist” version of y new project, Petrel 33; main upgrades form basic plans are:

  • 1,7 square meters of solar cells on the cabin top panels, you can also set up a roll bar on transom and gain another 1.5 square meters of solar panels

  • one or two 750 or 1300 mm diameter wind generators on the transom

  • one or two hydrogenerator on transom (yes I know they work better with super fast boats, but nonetheless in the long legs they do their work also on “normal” boats)

  • one small watermaker in the systems dedicated area

  • one more extra service battery and bigger ones: the standard battery pack on plans is made by two 80 Ah AGM batteries, we’d better have at least 300-360 Ah of total capacity on battery bank not to waste the energy we produce

  • improve the alternator on the engine, with a more powerful one than those offered as standard on most of the engines.

  • a little bit more extra work to have two 200 liters structural freshwater tanks under the galley berths, doubling the standard 200 liters water tank

and here it is, a small long range cruiser for a family of four or five.
The boat will look something like this.

 

edit: Thanks to Roberto Minoia for the “fine tuning” of this post