WillDo Jet Thrusters

[Willallison]

That would probably have been one of the Willdo units. They had both PTO and electric versions.
I'm still waiting to hear back from the new company... its been over a week now since I emailed them... perhaps Frederico can give them a kick...!

[FedericoSolnau]

Every body from the factory is at the Düsseldorf Boat Show at the moment.

They should be back at the office next week.

At the moment they are only building electric systems, but of course, they are planning to do PTO on the future. Even though this might take some time...

Cheers,

Federico Ramirez

[Willallison]

ahh... ok... thanks

[drjasper]

HI everyone, I'm too Australian, and I'm interested in this type of thrusters. I can't find an email address for the Holland company. Has anyone been able to contact them as yet? Ted

And I've just realised this conversation is a year old. hehe. Has anyone had any progress in finding out more about jet thrusters at all. and The cost?

[Willallison]

WillDo were, I believe, a victim of the GFC. They were taken over by Holland Marine Parts http://www.hollandmarineparts.nl/

I looked into them, but.... They are rather inefficient, requiring much larger motor for the same thrust as a traditional thruster. Also, they require 24 volts - and the application I was looking at was 12.

I contacted the factory direct and they were quite helpful...

[drjasper]

According to the advertising you can get them as 12v as well. I've tried contacting the Holland people but no response. That's why an email address might be helpful.

I know they are less efficient than the usual prop thrusters, but the way I'm looking at it is, that it doesn't matter about their efficiency as long as they work and putting a pump in my bow is relatively easy where as putting a standard thruster in would be very difficult for me.

Ted

[Willallison]

I just took a fresh look at the website myself Ted and you are right, they do now offer the smallest (30 kgf) thruster as a 12 volt unit. It was still under development when I last spoke to them. It was really a bit small for my application anyway...
All my correspondence was simply through the email shown on their website:
info@hollandmarineparts.nl

What sort of boat are you looking at installing it in?

[Ad Hoc]

Originally Posted by Willallison

...they do now offer the smallest (30 kgf) thruster as a 12 volt unit.

Will,
Have you looked at these??

http://viewer.zmags.com/publication/...#/06fa8bec/144

[Willallison]

Oh yes... trust me... I (think) I've looked at pretty much every thruster on the market!
Even those with the smaller diameter tubes are too big to fit into the boat in question. At its deepest, it has a draft of just 300mm and up the bow it's considerably less.
I even looked into putting a retractable jobbie in it and found a fabulous little unit from RMC ( http://www.rmcmarine.com/Products/RM...r/Default.aspx ) but even that wasn't submerged sufficiently to prevent the thruster from cavitating.

Another option was an externally mounted one. The best of these appears to be the Exturn ( http://marinno.com/e/index.html ) But (quite apart from looking dog ugly!) they can't be subjected to solid water passing by at more than 10 knots, which also wouldn't work in this case as the boat (intentionally) runs very flat.....
I did consider building a custom retractable system for the Exturn as it would be relatively simple (and it is a pretty efficient little unit), but the cost of the unit is quite high and by the time I had a centreboard-type arrangement built for it, the cost have just got a bit out of hand...

As always though, I keep looking - and I'm always open to suggestions.....