We are looking to buy a 30-35ft yacht for under $40K. Seems with this price bracket you get a 35yr old engine nearing the end of it's life. Advice is that replacing a diesel is going to cost upwards of $15k. Decent recon engines not really available.
Question is are electric sail drives an option? Someone has offered us a 2nd hand unit (worth 16k new) for very little. My understanding is that really you need a nbackup generator to go with this.
Any thoughts or advice?

thx

If you are prepared or capable of doing a lot of work yourself ,you can knock a few grand off that. I have a 10k boat with a 12k motor lol . I am not a fan of electric only because I can usually get a diesel motor to run . Electric not a chance. Those with electric conversions would be able to shed more light. If your engine is a buhk nearly all parts are available for a rebuild from what I'm lead to believe , which means you can run it till it needs work . An older Volvo however ,you can't get the parts that break from my experience, which is why my engine is new.

I recon if you had the drive unit it would be feasible. Batteries need charging. will you day sail from a marina berth ? Or extended cruise ? As to charging bigger battery banks away from the power point, petrol driven chargers are avalible, light, good amp output but not real cheap. ( little Honda motor, dc alternator with a manual reg )

Eventually electric motors will be fine but at the moment there seems to be a lot of people going back to diesel. Find the boat first and worry about the engine later. Most of the yachts you will look at might be 35-40 years old but the engines may have had little use. If you find a boat with a Kubota based engine like Beta's then brand new rebuilt short motors are $2500. Stick with what ever the yacht has at the moment will save on installation costs. Kubota's are used in small tractors, cement mixers etc everywhere and parts are freely available on eBay. Parts are cheaper from specialists than eBay though.

Thanks for your reply's. I am equally 'at sea' with a diesel or electric engine and don't want to be in the neighbourhood of one that need 'fixing'. i.e. I'd like to instal a good motor and look after if and be confident it will work when needed. be this electric or diesel. I'm sure in the near future there will be a lot more electric engines going into yachts, just not sure if we are there yet.

Thanks for your reply's. I am equally 'at sea' with a diesel or electric engine and don't want to be in the neighbourhood of one that need 'fixing'. i.e. I'd like to instal a good motor and look after if and be confident it will work when needed. be this electric or diesel. I'm sure in the near future there will be a lot more electric engines going into yachts, just not sure if we are there yet.

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woko said..
I recon if you had the drive unit it would be feasible. Batteries need charging. will you day sail from a marina berth ? Or extended cruise ? As to charging bigger battery banks away from the power point, petrol driven chargers are avalible, light, good amp output but not real cheap. ( little Honda motor, dc alternator with a manual reg )

Yes reliable generators seem an option. I think modern, 'off the shelf' units are able to be powered directly from the generator as backup.

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bigskippy said..
Thanks for your reply's. I am equally 'at sea' with a diesel or electric engine and don't want to be in the neighbourhood of one that need 'fixing'. i.e. I'd like to instal a good motor and look after if and be confident it will work when needed. be this electric or diesel. I'm sure in the near future there will be a lot more electric engines going into yachts, just not sure if we are there yet.

Hi bigskippy,
I went through the process of changing over my engine late last year. I had been mucking around trying to sort out a vire 7 2 stoke for nearly 3 years. As a part of looking at the change over I looked at electric options and the advice from the supplier was that unless I had the capacity for battery storage going electric would get me on and off the mooring but if I was cruising and needed engine back up it could become problematic. I finished up putting in a Beta 10 engine including a whole engine support frame thanks to Dave down in Woodford Bay. Puts a smile on my face now when I can go out to my boat turn a key and go out and enjoy my boat. Was well worth the $11,000 I spent.

Cheers

MrMac