So apart from loss of a few Hp - no disadvantages for shaft drives when it comes to electric? Maybe faster bearing wear if hydroregen? Also how much Hp is lost to the gearbox, plus haulout fees/accessibility to repair on sail drives. No "Dedicated" engine room - well thats a bad design of the boat and not one related to shaft drives.

You need shaft drives on a cat that require engines of 78 HP. And if you have a cat of this size you can put the engines aft of the aft quarters, as we do on our Balance 75. That is hard to do on a sub-55 foot cat.

Thank you. I continue to think that the best thing about the E-drive is the crazy fast charging. The technology Integral acquired from Parker Hannifin Engineering is the secret sauce. Plus all of their RD and testing these past few years.

@@balancecatamarans It's a good concept, and I trust the Integrel folks to implement it well.

That's not his point. His point is that the prop is tilted at an angle which sends some of the thrust in a vertical vector which doesn't move the boat horizontally. That's less efficient. Straight shafts have gearboxes also.

Yes, and the straight shaft angle reduces thrust in the desired direction therefore reducing effective HP implying sail drives were more efficient in a straight line thrust arrangement. That ignores the HP loss in a gearbox with 2 right angle changes in the sail drive. I don’t know which one ultimately is more efficient but both systems loose efficiency.

@@elmer665544 Both types have gearboxes.

Not really, at least on the Wynns boat. Their diesel is underpowered, and the prop is tuned for regen and not propulsion basically can only motor around 5knots. HH is now upping diesel HP and improved props. The overall benefit is doubtfull though. Not really seen yet a good summary of what you get after you pay $100K extra for a hybrid system.

The HH uses the parallel system he described. But HH say the boat can run on electric alone for about 1.5 to 2 hours. That's like 10 miles

HH uses the Beta Marine hybrid. It's a parallel hybrid that can power the boat directly from diesel or directly from electric.

@@sailingsandy7971 Speaking of electric drive (with regen/hydrogeneration) in general, you get the ability to do all motoring except long windless passages silently and without burning fossil fuels. You get the ability to recharge the energy used to motor away from a mooring ball or anchorage or harbor simply by raising the sails and regenerating battery power by sailing., i.e., it's functionally wind-powered motoring. For people who care about the environment and living in better harmony with nature, as many sailors do, that's a major advantage. Regarding prop selection and motor sizing, those are design decisions. Every engineering decision is a tradeoff that optimizes different things. On the Wynn's boat they optimized regen over speed. Those are all parameters that can be adjusted in different dimensions. For example, higher speed can mean less efficient regen. HH is still learning how to optimize. It's good to hear they're adjusting things based on new information.

@@fearhand12 How long does it take to motor off a mooring ball? 2 hours? More like 5 minutes. If longer motoring is needed, with a hybrid, one can just fire up the Diesel.

Lots of sailors today are using large Lithium Iron Phosphate battery banks for house loads and/or propulsion, and lots of solar, with no problems and lots of benefits. With enough solar, generators get little to no use. Hydrogeneration also supports the lack of generator use, since it recharges the battery bank and powers house loads simply by sailing, i.e., it's wind powered electricity. Solar panels are so cheap and efficient that they've largely replaced wind generators, for example. (Lithium Iron Phosphate is both highly durable and very safe. Which is why it's becoming universal in boats and increasingly used in road vehicles. It also does not use any scarce or rare materials.) A Windelo 54 with electric drive recently did 2 Atlantic crossings and never started the (backup serial hybrid Diesel) generator once. It helps that it's a very efficient sailboat that can sail in very light winds. For a performance boat the advantages of electrification compound, and it's disappointing that Balance is being too slow to progress. I understand the need for conservatism in marine engineering. Balance is missing the boat here somewhat.

Thanks for saying all that.... Theres several progects on U tube that demonstrate the effectiveness of the Electric motor ...battery day tank ..multiple sources Of generation charging or by pass feed to the motors. The NZ Earthling motor E 40 cat.. shows a higher efficient cruising speed 10knt can be obtained by keeping the battery pack size down and using two light quiet utra efficient generators running at their Stoichiometric optimum.. but above all the prop has to be radically different the sort badly compromised paddles we've mostly been using for over the past century. You also need to rethink how you present the prop enorder to get max regen as well as best propulsion. Gearboxes, clutches, complex transmissions are all dead wt cost and complexity if they are mechanically tied together you loose the advantages of modern brushless motors ..basicly very little maintainance only the bearings are movingbin contact with themselves ... and waterproof dust oils seals. Those electricotors are high quality items.. but if you use rare earth perminant magnet motors and you expose them...to too high temperatures or vibrations such as from a piston compresssion ICE engine you will weaken the and damage the permanent magnets... generally electrical systems dont do well exposed to heat. There is a class of motor that doesnt even need to use copper in its construction let alone anything as difficult and toxic as rare earth metals...and it is consequently more heat and vibration impact resistant. Where you are competing against the millitary always puts you in a dillema....theres 25 Kg of rare earth metals in every one of those stealth fighters and yes till recently just like batteries the worlds tech industries have been happy to buy from the leaders in the refining and processing industry. Its a whole lot simpler and more efficient typically by 20 -30% to keep the big bits away from each other and just join them up with wires or rather conductors. Solar pannels are far more efficient especially in full sun/ hot conditions and much much longer lasting if they are kept cooled liquids circulating at the back. Thoughbtheres a new chemistry on the way thats been tested but they have to figure out how to mass produce the panels at scale using multi layer Titanates 30-50 layers each microns thick doped onto a carrier the products hair thicknesses thick ...and the conversion efficiency is orders of magnitude greater than even the best current Silicon and or Peroskite panels... So is the stabillity. Meantime the other area all composite boat manufacturers have to look at is the materials they use in hull construction. GRP and Carbon fibers are both imensly problematic in terms of their manufacture and use. Even without the problematic plastics/epoxies that we have been using since the 1950s. Theres also the problem of the ammounts of single use plastics that are used in the production of moulded vessels. GRP in particular leaves a lot to be desired ... and if the research in the UK and Europe currently underway stands up then theres going to be a hell of a need to rethink its use and the whole end of life ⛵disposal problem. 🧙🏻‍♂️

@@LoanwordEggcorn At what cost? Be clear - Balance isn't "disappointing" rather, they are balancing complexity, off grid operations, maximum energy on board - example, ample air conditioning and the power to run it cuz if you cruise in the tropics you won't be able to sleep without it - and value. Also, what never gets mentioned is that there is far more power loss in an electric system due to the nature of electric current compared to diesel. And I can buy diesel anywhere. I'll leave folks here with this thought. You are 500 miles from the nearest port with a big city, which is direct into the wind. You have a passenger on board who's injured and needs to get to a hospital in that city. Which would you rather have? Diesel or electric. Any honest person knows the answer to that question. And don't tell me they won't and don't break. I've sailed for too long and sold too many boats as a broker. Everything breaks. Every additional system/component adds risk and complexity. If you have a fetish for electric, have at it. But it's not more green nor practical for serious offshore/grid cruising. If you don't believe me, look at the supply chain for batteries and the electric motor and additional components. That's green? Really?

@@glenn2745 Agree a passagemaking boat probably still needs a Diesel. Was suggesting Balance move towards more solar so they don't need to run the generator as often. Many cruisers today have more solar on their own boats. A nice thing about a performance boat that can sail efficiently in light winds is that it reduces the use of the motor. Regarding supply chains, don't believe everything the oil companies propagandize without checking the facts yourself. Perfectly good AC electric motors can be made from steel and copper with no exotic materials. Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries use no scarce metals like Cobalt or Nickel. Lithium, Iron and Phosphorous are extremely common.

Glenn, you are correct it is more money and I am not sure myself if it is a pure green payoff as you put it. That's why we will continue to offer less costly diesel only Balance cats. An earlier comment was that Balance needed to adjust to the market, and we were never opposed to installing hybrid systems, but we just didn't feel great about most of them, did not feel they offered enough pros over cons for us to advocate for them. We waited patiently to see how the E-Drive was coming along and felt it was an elegant solution both for electric propulsion but also fast charging and extended high speed/high range motoring when required. As for risk, we know the team at Integrel and have worked with them for years so that meant a lot to us.

Sorry, this isn't true. In fact a recent email I got from someone who watched the video shared with me another sunken shaft driven boat that ran aground. I've sold 1,000 cats in my days as a broker, and I have no seen any cost savings for my customers with shafts over drives and of all the cats that I've seen really seriously scuttled it was shaft cats. They engines must be far forward in the hulls on any cat under 55 feet and under the berths. But lets not fight over this. You have your view. I co-designed the boats with Anton and we believe in drives for all the reasons I stated. I just think for those who want shafts on a cat under 55 feet you are left with just one or two options, so whatever benefits you think they offer you are accepting the pros and cons of every other aspect of those designs. All designs and builds represent trade-offs of some sort or another. A buyer who gets hung up on one feature as being somehow paramount is prepared to close their eyes on all sorts of other features of a yacht that may be less "perfect."