Boat Design

Lithium Charlatanism

It's great to see electrification taking off, as was definitely evident at a recent boat show. It's a little less great to see how much charlatanism and huckstership have tainted the nascent field of marine lithium batteries and the equipment that uses them.
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This 1100 W electric outboard is equivalent to a 3 hp gas engine!
1100 W is 1.475 hp, by the literal definition of horsepower which is 1 hp = 745.7 W. Stop lying.
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Why I over-design electrical systems

"Why", I'm sometimes asked, "do you specify electrical stuff that's bigger and more powerful than I had expected?"

It's a justifiable question. Batteries are expensive, heavy and bulky; why would you want any more of them than necessary? And what's with the multiple shutoff switches, subpanels, and other non-typical features of my electrical designs?

Criticality One

Anything that people make is going to break. This is inevitable. It's a direct consequence of unavoidable, fundamental laws of the universe.

Part of the art of engineering is to control where, and after how long, things will break. We can't prevent failure entirely, but we can focus our efforts on the most critical items and we can ensure that the complete system – an engine, boat, spacecraft, whatever – is unlikely to fail at all within a certain service life.

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