Not true at all. We cruisied with a couple last winter that rarely had to
run the
motor to charge the batteries. They had 3 solar panels and a wind
generator. We are in the process of putting on a few solar panels but
with our wind generator alone we were able to do quite well. A little
further south into the trades and we would have been able to go for
many days or weeks without running the generator.

Doug
s/v Callista

"Kelton Joyner" wrote in message
...
We sometimes go a week or two without shore power. How would you propose
keeping the batteries charged. The current technology for wind
generators and solar cells won't do it unless you covered the boat with
cells and put in a "farm" of generators.
Kelton s/v Isle Escape

Parallax wrote:
My sailboat has 3600 lbs of dead weight ballast. Seems like a real
waste to me.


So....Useless idea #3740

Make a boat with 60 lead acid batteries as ballast powering a high
efficiency 48 V motor. No diesel or gas, connect to shore power
overnight and you could have enough juice to go...........I dunno

Another story:

I have a friend who collects weird techno-surplus and sells it. He
bought several tons of lead bricks from a radioactive source
manufacturer that went out of business. Loaded it into the back of
his pickup and drove it to Tallahassee and parked on a hill. Of
course his parcking brake failed and the truck rolled about 10 feet
till it was stopped by a wall. There would have been no damage except
the entire load of lead bricks decided to slide through the cab. Not
sure what he told the insurance company.