Roxane & Romilly

Installed the ePropulsion Spirit Plus into my Romilly yesterday.
Really happy with the result. No issues with reverse as described in the article above, maybe the propeller has changed slightly…
A couple of notes to share here:
1. The aft end of the battery is hard tight against the aft cockpit coaming. Will need to keep an eye on that.
2. At slow manoeuvring speeds, the hours of use prediction for the battery looks great. When motoring or motorsailing the hours drop down as the revs increase. It does not appear to make any averaging of the power use, so we will need to learn how long the battery lasts in mixed use.
The near silent running is a joy and the clean unit when manhandling in and out of the well in addition to zero smell is all you would expect.
9.8/10.

I have installed the ePropulsion Spirit outboard. I am a true believer!
Positives:
- So very quiet
- Effortless Starting
- Seamless gearchange (twist one way or the other)
- Hours of running left shown for the throttle level you are at
- Lighter to lift in and out
- Great to use for a bit of motorsailing here and there on your passage
Negatives
- Solar Panel (100w) takes ages to deliver any charge
- 2-blade prop near horizontal will prevent lifting out (need to use a boathook to turn prop to vertical)
- Set-up as on the picture above can be tricky to lift in and out (have set at 7 degree tilt to reduce this)

Things we have learned:
- Take the wall charger if you are staying overnight (you can plug it in at the pub)
- the 12v charger can be handy if sailing in company with an overnight stay
- Half throttle lasts much longer than full throttle for a couple of knots reduction in speed

This is a very interesting and useful thread Ken. We are about to acquire a Romilly and by a happy coincidence already own an E Prop Spirt Plus Short shaft which we have found to be a brilliant tender motor. For the Romilly I want to find a way to extend the range and am thinking about a hybrid system along the lines of that used here http://www.romilly.nl/integrated-battery-assist.html. The plan is to use E-Propulsion’s fast charger with a petrol driven portable generator to replenish the E- Propulsion’s own battery and a back up battery as necessary. It would be very helpful to hear more details of how the Romilly has performed in real life conditions with the electric motor: what is the speed in other than flat calm conditions? The description of the IBA system suggests that only 700 watts is needed to push the Romilly along at 5 knots. The E Prop motor puts out 1000 watts, though of course the standard battery on its own won’t last long at that rate.

Hi Martin
The E-propulsion works very well as main propulsion against tide and wind for an hour or two. When motor sailing I find that 100-200 watts is sufficient to make an important difference to manoeuvrability and boat speed. At this power the battery will last many hours.
Ed