Plugboats Weekly Roundup – April 1 – 7
Welcome to this electric boat news round up: April 1 to April 7, 2019.
COMMERCIAL / HYDROFOILS
FlyBus – SeaBubbles’ new electric hydrofoil ferry?
From going through twitter tweets from Alain Thebault, creator of SeaBubbles, the electric hydrofoil water taxi that has landed its first 10 orders, it seems he is ‘thinking of bigger things’.
There have been pictures (with the watermark Dragon Rouge, a global creative agency) and tweets and drawings of the FlyBus, which seems to be a 32 passenger version of SeaBubbles.
CHARTERS / CARIBBEAN
Virgin Islands has its first electric charter yacht
Voyage Charters, a very highly rated British Virgin Islands charter company (5 rating on TripAdvisor with 157 reviews) now has an electric option for sailors, the first of its kind in the BVI.
The addition of the electric boat to the Voyage fleet is due at least in part to the efforts of the company and the local industry to rebound from the devastating impact of two Category 5 hurricanes (one of them Maria) that hit the islands within two weeks of each other in 2017.
COMPETITIONS / SOLAR
Vendée Globe competitor all set with solar panels
One of the premier boats competing in one of the world’s great sailing races – the Vendée Globe – has just been outfitted with solar panels in advance of receiving an electric propulsion system. The design and installation of panels that can provide energy for a boat travelling 24,000 nautical miles and traversing 100˚ of latitude is being done by Solbian, whose slogan, appropriately enough is: “We create solar energy under any conditions.”
COMMERCIAL /ELECTRIC MOTORS
E-motors make revolutionary survival craft possible
Viking Life Saving have been given approval for their revolutionary Life CRAFT Survival Craft – inflatable as most life rafts are, but also able to be self propelled and steerable like a life boat. The LifeCraft is powered by four Torqeedo Cruise 4.0 electric pod drives, one at each corner, which are compact enough to be incorporated into the self-inflating design.
THROWBACK THURSDAYS
Throwback Thursday: the naming of Torqeedo
This week’s TBT is a bit of a play on words. Not only does it refer to a throwback to the past of Torqeedo electric motors, but also to the latest news just this week from the company’s sponsorship of a catch and release bass fishing tournament. (Those are the founders of Torqueedo in a 2005 photo, a year after they began work on their electric motor.)
RECREATIONAL / POWER BOATS
Electric boat website up for Webby Award
The ‘Oscars’ of the internet, the Webbys, announced the nominees for their 23rd annual awards on April 2 in New York. The website of Swedish electric boat X-Shore is one of 5 sites up for ‘Best User Interface’ in the People’s Voice Awards, the public voting section of the show. It’s quit an accomplishment considering the International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences received 13,000 entries from 70 countries.
