Green boat on a blue planet.

For the two long singlehanded trips Elsi did not have an engine or generator onboard. She carried no petrol or diesel. All the charging for the batteries was done by renewable means using wind, water and solar power.

Click on any image to enlarge.

: An Aero6Gen wind turbine provided one of the main sources of power.

: It was mounted on a steel pipe at the stern. In very bad weather I would unship the whole thing and take it inside. In the Southern Ocean I only used four blades instead of six. This limited how fast it would spin and made it far easier to get down below.

: Once the engine was out I could fit in a permanent magnet alternator on the propshaft. As we sailed through the water the propellor turned to produce power.

: Prop shaft alternator

: The shaft alternator produced ac power which went into a bank of rectifiers to convert it to dc before going to the charge controllers and onto the batteries.

: Output from the Propshaft alternator and towing generator went into seperate Tristar TS-45 charge controllers.

: The battery switches were set up in a way that allowed any charging system to charge either or both batteries.

: Solar panels didn’t produce a high power output but they were very handy when there was no wind.

: ..but on too many days we had calms.

: I made up a towing generator using the same PMA as the shaft alternator. I didn’t use it that often as I got most of my power from the wind turbine and the shaft alternator.

: The best way to pull in the towing generator prop is to slip a funnel down the line to stop in turning or reduce speed. I didn’t have a funnel and the line usually came in like this.