Outboard Discussions

[Hull376]

Go with the Nissan, Tohatsu, Mercury 6 HP 4 cycle. These are all the same engine, all made by Tohatsu. Many of us have these, and seem to be trouble free and very reliable. I second Mike's suggestion. Get the accessory that lets the pull start cord exit vertical

[Robert Lemasters]

Talked to a fellow at the boatyard from Washington State who said that he uses an 6hp electric outboard motor for his 26 ft sailboat. He says that the motor puts out the same power as a 9 hp gas outboard.Can be fully charged from 110 shorepower in a few hours with a run time of about 10 hours at hullspeed with no power drop off. Drawback is the weight of the 10 deep cycle 6 volt batteries. With the 50 lb. electric outboard motor unit thats a total weight of about 400 +lbs I should think. He noticed me changing the oil in my Nissan outboard said that gas powered outboards would be a thing of the past someday. Price of his electric outboard (60 volt)was over $4,000 plus batteries and charger.

[Robert Lemasters]

Did some research, 6 hp electric outboard motors with bank of 10 6 volt deep cycle batteries would weigh over 700 lbs, would operate at hull speed on our boats for less than 2hrs, and need 12 hours to recharge discharged batteries with 20% charge remaining. Hense no free lunch.

[c_amos]

I have thought about an electric trolling motor just to get in and out of the slip. It seems like that might be a viable option for someone who mainly daysails.

On the original topic, my 6hp yamaha 2 stoke and the old suzuki 8 2 stroke moved my boat just fine. The 9.9 2 stroke on Ariel Spirit was too heavy, and made too much thrust at anything more then half throttle. The merc 9.9 was hard to drop in the well, and is even harder to remove.

IMHO, a 5,6 or 8 hp is pleanty, and the lighter the better.

FWIW.

On edit:

I just did a search, there are pages and pages of threads on outboards. Each time we start a new one, it makes the next guy have a harder time find their answer (having to seach through multiple threads). It might help if we could merge some of them, and all remember to search the old threads before starting new ones.

[Bill]

I just did a search, there are pages and pages of threads on outboards. Each time we start a new one, it makes the next guy have a harder time find their answer (having to seach through multiple threads). It might help if we could merge some of them, and all remember to search the old threads before starting new ones.

Yes, it REALLY helps if people search first and post last Merging threads is definately on my to do list, and some do get merged. Hopefully when we upgrade the software, the merging process will be a bit easier.