e-Cat conversion

Michael Sanatani’s electrification of a British fishing catamaran into a Canadian family cruiser

- Michael Sanatani

The province of Ontario in Canada provides a huge range of boating opportunities, from historic man-made canals to more than 250,000 inland lakes, the 30,000 islands archipelago of Georgian Bay, to near-oceanic conditions on the vast Great Lakes.

Naturally, no single vessel can be ideally suited for all these waters: sailboats, large powerboats and cruisers are at home on the Great Lakes; houseboats and smaller cruisers on the canal; and canoes, small powerboats, sailboats, and pontoon boats can best find their way around the archipelagos and inland lakes.

Nevertheless, when making the leap from canoeing to the acquisition of a powered vessel, I wanted an easily trailerable craft that would enable as broad a spectrum of family boating as possible.

In addition, coming from the silence and eco-friendliness of a canoe, I wanted to minimise the fossil fuel impact-which for the sailors among the readers would mean a sailboat, of course! However, finding the art of learning how to sail a bit daunting, and the prospect of trailering a sailboat a bit too cumbersome, I set about searching for a suitable hull for a hybrid electric vessel- to allow silent electric cruising on the canals and around the marinas, and hybrid gasoline/electric propulsion in rougher water and to cover larger distances-common in Canada!-at higher speeds.

The discussion you often find is around electric boats versus gasoline boats, but mixing outboard types is also feasible and, I think, a good compromise to maximise flexibility in energy use.

Hull considerations

The first question was that of a displacement versus planing hull. Clearly, for electric propulsion, displacement would have been the way to go, as the most efficient hull would be needed.