"Edgar" wrote in
:

Small sailboat? So, probably a 12 volt battery..
746 watts is 62 amps at 12 volts-far too much for your battery.
Certainly there is an upper limit to the power you can get, but there
should be no problem in getting quite enough to power up anything you
have aboard a small sailboat.





Lionheart, my friend Geoffrey's Amel Sharki 41 has a Perkins 4-108 with
freewheeling hydraulic transmission and a shaft alternator that produces
about 25A of 12V power at 7 knots, about as fast as she'll go. It still
produces 15A at 6 knots, but drops off rapidly below 5 knots as the load
stalls it. There's a large wheel on the shaft about 6" behind the
transmission turning about a 3" wheel on the specially-designed-to-turn-
slowly alternator, which I think Motorola made. It's not self-exciting
and requires 12V, switched by a key in the control panel where the
ammeter shows you how we're doing. This key is on a welded ring with the
engine key and locks itself into the panel until you turn it off. This
prevents even the stupidest amoung us from running the shaft alternator
when the engine is running, which the instructions say will destroy it.

The key to all this is that transmission that allows the shaft to
freewheel without destroying the transmission.

Larry
--
Next time some broker tells you what a great investment he's selling,
ask him about Rhodium, a shiny metal used in Catalytic Converters.
Jan 1st 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008
Rhodium $452 $1341 $3006 $5339 $6775 PER OUNCE!
How much longer can we pay for new cars at this rate?
Feb '97 it was $182/oz