Dutch Barge long distance cruisers

Going to be real interesting on passage when the wind is blowing the wrong way and the batteries are all flat.....

What you want cannot be done with the current state of technology and PV/battery powered boats and their limitations have been thrashed to death on this forum so many times that nobody is going to take you seriously. You obviously haven't done your homework.

PDW

 

Doesn't a euro/dutch barge have a round bottom?An American barge is dead flat,at least the ones I have seen are.

 

(sigh) more criticism saying it's impossible.

Look let me tell you how it COULD be done for certain right now:

Sailboat + solar panels on top.

There are plenty of boats / houses out there that run everything EXCEPT the engines on solar. Yes, their TV, microwaves, dish washer, lights, computers, washer / dryer, and YES even the AC heater / cooling on nothing but solar. It doesn't take that many panels either. Maybe 6-7 panels.

I actually know a guy who has a 100% solar house. You can say it can't be done, but I can personally take you to one of these "figments of your imagination," and let you stand inside it. He's not even hooked to the grid at all. It even handles his water filtration. If you click the play button on the video I posted, you can watch that "figment of your imagination" sail down the river. I mean... THERE IT IS. You are looking at it for goodness sake!

A sailboat could take care of the engine problem, while the solar panels could take care of the rest. It would have to be a fairly big sailboat though with enough room inside for everything you would need + the room for the panels on top would be kinda hard to come up with.

You keep saying I haven't done my homework. I have done weeks of homework. I am an engineer. It is a tall order, but it is theoretically possible to get enough panels to run everything given the surface area of a boat as long as most of the top of the boat is flat and it would be ok to mount panels on it.

No I am not saying the thing could be run CONSTANTLY. There are no amount of solar panels that are going to keep you from draining those batteries in a heck of a hurry, but I have found electric engines efficient enough, batteries with enough storage, and panels that give enough watts per square foot to give you about 16-18 hours of operation if you had enough batteries inside the boat (which is a lot). Then you would have to let it charge back up for a long time.

That is ok though, if you only go from town to town along the great loop, stop for a while between each town, get off, and go party, see the town, vacation a while... THEN go to the next town giving your boat plenty of time to charge back up. Also, while traveling, you are going fairly slow. You are on vacation. This isn't a speed boat. You will get there eventually. Take your time. It's ok.

My calculations show that you could replace some of the weights in the boat with batteries, tear out the engines for more batteries, tear out the gas tank for more batteries. Electric engines of the same horsepower weigh much less. Maybe some wind generators on top too. (You would have to be careful about that though so they won't get torn off in storms.)

SO...

You let me worry about the complicated stuff like engine power, batteries, and wattage requirements. Just give suggestions on boat types with a lot of flat space on top that could have solar panels put on it them. Preferably seaworthy boat types between 50ft - 100ft long.

For the record, when I say seaworthy, I mean: "Can reliably make it from California to Japan / New Zealand, Florida to Caribbean islands even if it gets in a moderately bad storm (not talking about ANY type of hurricanes here) without breaking anything other than maybe some furniture."

 

(sigh) Another engineer without a clue.

Your ideas and requirements are so outlandish, it points to zero experience with boats or water and casts serious doubts on your mechanical abilities. It is more in the realm of science fiction. For most people it is a waste of time to seriously try and fit such a square peg into the round hole of reality. All you have gotten so far has been constructive criticism. "Wow, I want some of what you're smoking; a total disconnect from reality" is very constructive criticism.

It's obvious your interest is solar panels. So yeah, you worry about the complicated stuff like engine power, batteries, and wattage requirements. Good luck with that when there are no practical examples of it being done. Let others worry about the simple stuff of designing a boat to do the impossible, since you don't have a clue. "Don't just tell me what can't be done. Tell me why it won't work. Then tell me what it is going to take to do it." sounds like the standard approach of a typical middle manager who has risen to his level of incompetence.

 

www.planetsolar.org

and

http://www.solarwave.at/project/boat.html

Yes, YES! These are the kinds of numbers and stats I need for my research!

A family sized 100% solar boat and a bigger ocean going 100% solar boat that has proven it can make it across the Atlantic and pacific by doing it!

No practical examples of it being done eh? EAT IT! You are just flat out WRONG! Hah!

Thank you to the people who had actual constructive criticism. Extra Special thanks to capt vimes, and erik818!

The rest of the critics failboat... hard. At this point I have provided 5 examples of boats, which are not theoretical. They exist, and have been performing for years. Two of them have sailed across the Atlantic! People keep saying what isn't feasible, can't be done, impossible, no practical examples, BUT I have empirical evidence that PROVES them wrong! Those people need to stop talking. It can be done, and has been done. On top of that, there isn't just one way to do it. It has been done multiple different ways.

One example was a river boat company that makes them. Another was Sun 21. Another is a house on a barge with solar panels on top. Another is a Catamaran style family sized houseboat. Another is a boat called PlanetSolar. All of them, 100% solar including the engines.

Really, I thought that since this place was called BoatDesign, I might find a higher percentage of reason, but, truly, it is my fault for forgetting that it is all the same in the end: I was asking the internet for advice. The internet doesn't give useful advice usually. Mostly, it just criticizes and yells loud.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some visionaries to contact.

 

You're the one who set the ridiculous parameters and then sigh and talk down to people when told they are ridiculous.

You're the one who wants an ocean crossing barge with a 15 x 20 living room and in addition wants at least 1 area where you can spread your arms without touching anything. What, your arms are 10' feet long?

Did you notice my qualifier of solar power, "practical"?



If you think "Planetsolar" is practical, dream on. I don't think it's practical to begin with, add on the price tag of $20 million, even you couldn't consider it practical.

You set the parameter of

How's that fit in with the "SolarWave"s

I know what a self-serving puff piece is, unlike yourself. Much as you'd like to think the "SolarWave" is an around the world vessel, here's their own log of where they've been...

http://www.satmatix.eu/map/track/MapView.do;jsessionid=69DE1DC05C7D33C4FE52E0FD379C8333

I'll take their word for it that they didn't use their

,

but since they only putputted around from dock to dock in the sunniest place on earth, BFD.

Where are they going next after they get the boat out of drydock? Heading off to Japan? The Caribbean? Australia? Nah, they're going back to the same place to peddle their pipe dream to more fools like you.

Can you find a price for the SolarWave? I can't, but I doubt it's practical.

Tell me to EAT IT! ? **** you and the horse you rode in on, Mr. Engineer.

 

Val, it can be done! What's your budget? 10M buks? Believe me, this site is one of the very best to bring a dreamer to reality. These guys know what they are talking about and what may be said just isn't what we want to hear. Take advice.

Have you cost this project out with state of the art panels, controllers, motors and emergency power sources?

The mondo is not going to make it to Japan, it would have trouble doing the Great Loop, it's not for much of anything beyond rivers, lakes and inlets. I considered this boat.

There have been some electric boats made and they sell very slowly, not really practicle but some small lakes have restrictions that make them useful. Just because we can put a man on the moon doesn't mean I'll save money by flying with a Saturn rocket. It's financially restrictive, to accomplish, keep, use and sell.

Sailing is not my expertise, finance is, I may have missed it in all the pages, but what is your budget? If you have enough money, very little is impossible, but many things are improbable and with a low budget, things do become impossible. If your dream boat is marketable you may get investors, but what is the market demand? Already touched on that aspect.

Now, if you limit your requirements, like an open ocean crossing, things will come into scale and become more feasible. But, if you have $10M to drop on this project, by all means, let's continue the feasibility...... I have a 19 year old young man going to college in my house, so I'm use to these types of discussions........

 

A little skepticism goes a long ways when dealing with visionaries.

 

No they all have a flat bottom, they only have radius chines.
The design is intended for a maximum cargo capacity.

 

IF you like math ,,contemplate the terminal velocity as a wave tosses you from one side of a 15 ft wide space to the other.

House boats and ocean venturing boats have very different interior concepts for a GOOD reason.

FF

 

Seascape?

Forgetting about the whole solar thing, what about a Bonito Boats 'Seascape'? It's the same dimensions as a barge, but supposed to be Cat B (Europe), and they claim it can be made Cat A, so offshore capable (theoretically speaking - they have only made the Cat B version afaik)

More on the website: http://www.bonitoboats.eu

Bommelaer also make Cat A barges: http://www.jettenyachting.com/Bommelaer

 

Rivetted iron vs. mild steel

I am responding 6 years late. please expound on your comparison of rivetted iron vs mild steel.

 

Rcardozo

Sorry I had missed this post. if you reply I should get it. To my knowledge there are maybe 5 sailing barges in the US I am one of them.

 

Rcardozo

No the other way around. my 73' boat "Morgenster was in St Mary's Georgia and was taken North to Baltimore. There is a 60' Dutch Sailing barge "Neeltje" that was in Baltimore and that was taken to Tampa about the same time. Last I heard it was for sale north of Tampa somewhere. Both boats were built in the 1890's and are Tjalks.

 

I'll bet you're a software engineer and a pretty young one, if you're any sort of engineer.

BTW, in case you haven't figured it out yet, the 'engineer' part of a software engineer is a joke.

You really, really have not got a clue and there's no point being polite about it. Blue water passages take *weeks*. You cannot just stop and recharge for days. What are you going to do, anchor? Lessee, 3 days recharging and drifting the wrong way for each day's powering along. That's going to work real well. Even better when the weather turns to crap and now you're beam-on in a barge.

PDW