Electric Repowers for Wooden Boats

In our shop, we’ve been lucky that our customers usually approach us with aspirations for electric power, with no hard sell needed. Most don’t have electric cars, and although green-energy ideas do inspire some, for many the attraction of electric power in a boat is about the experience, not the carbon credits.

Many wooden boat owners are drawn to the sensory experience of being afloat. The appeal might lie in the honey glow of a varnished coaming, the soft roughness of a bare wood sole, or the splash of water against a lapstrake hull. A quiet electric motor complements the subtleties that many of us appreciate about wooden boats.

While sleek, futuristic speedsters or complicated foiling runabouts might grab the headlines, I’d bet most people’s first electric boat will be one they already own. Over the past several years, the shop I work for, Hylan & Brown Boatbuilders in Brooklin, Maine, has completed a number of electric repowers of conventionally powered boats. We’ve learned through these projects that, while not every boat or scenario is right for electric power, the applications are wider than many people realize. We’ve also learned that many wooden boat owners have no qualms about installing a brand-new electric propulsion system in a century-old boat. Updating an old classic with today’s technology isn’t anachronistic; it’s an investment that can help ensure a boat’s survival—a commitment to the value of the journey, not the destination.

This is not a how-to article. Rather, it’s an examination of “how we do it.”

To read the rest of this article:

Click the button below to log into your Digital Issue Access account.

Read the Issue

No digital access? Subscribe or upgrade to a WoodenBoat Digital Subscription and finish reading this article as well as every article we have published for the past 50-years.

Subscribe Now