• 3 Posts
  • 467 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 21st, 2023

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  • Most rooms in my house each have at least a handful of different, indirect lighting solutions. I could pay an electrician to wire them all to a single mains switch, but then I would need them to come back whenever I want it changing. It would also be more complicated to have dimmers and set programs for different times of the day to to adjust the lighting to a number of presets.

    I could just have the one or two overhead lights that these rooms came with, but that’s just an unpleasant to look at experience to my eyes all of the overhead lights got replaced with ceiling fans that have no lighting that come on when the room is occupied and over a certain temp.

    You walk in the room, a bunch of lights and may be a fan come on at the right lighting for that time of the day, then they go off at a suitable period of time. I even have all my garden lighting coming on via motion despite some of it being a separate 12v system that’s battery and solar powered via a 12v zigabee multi channel relay.



  • Hozelock adjustable long spray lance, absolutely unfit for purpose, disposable garbage that broke after 3 months.

    Last refund was a nightmare as it was a purchase from Amazon and outside their 30 day window, so initially they did not want to accept the return and directed me to the manufacturer. Hozelock just refused to engage, and directed me back to Amazon, endless loop. After going round this loop I then complaining to Amazon for a solid 10 minutes and they eventually agreed to pay for pick up of the item then refund when it was picked up.

    Replaced it with a more expensive Dramm lance that every part is user replaceable with available spare parts, and much less plastic components.





  • Super rich for me is being able to run a motor yacht that’s typically way over 100 feet with 4 or more crew on average of 100k each. Captain might be on anything up to 250k with a decent tonnage license and experience. High chance of a chase boat with its own separate crew.

    The running costs of that boat would bankrupt even a decently wealthy millionaire in a year or two.

    Rich is being able to run a modern 50 foot plus motor yacht for coastal cruising without a crew. Or a recent 50 foot sailboat with all the trimmings like an oyster.

    But those are just my definitions.

    I think idiots like bezos with his pathetic cosplay of a sailing boat that can’t even sail with more than one mast unfurled really don’t help the perception of sailing with the super rich.

    We need more boats like the black pearl that can actually sail and be off grid on renewables for proper ocean crossing. Shame that most super rich just fly to their boat rather than actually crossing the oceans on them.






  • So I was talking about hydro generators that go in the water rather than a wind turbine that rely on direct wind. I prefer the former as it doesn’t muck up the aero on the boat (sails can rob it of power with their dirty air) nor does it get in the way of the deck space that is often limited on a smaller boat. You could use both but I am not fan of wind turbines except at anchor.

    With a normal sail boat its common to have more wind that you can safely handle with the boat, you can use the drag of a hydro generator, which goes in the water only when you need it, to help slow the boat down rather than reefing or reefing as much (intentionally making the sails smaller). As wind is the only thing generating motion for the sail boat, its free energy that you otherwise would not be using.

    Motor boats rely on the motor to move them, so any drag means the motor has to work harder, imagine dragging a drogue (water parachute used as an anchor), its the same thing, its no longer free energy and you are actually spending more energy moving the same distance as the hydro generator doesn’t generate as much energy as it costs to use. Its the same problem for a wind turbine, as that increases aero rather than water drag for the motor boat, requiring more effort from the motor for the same speed & distance.

    Motor yachts would be better switching their engine over energy generation as a generator for recharging the EV batteries. Indeed there are some bigger motor yachts that do exactly this as a backup to their solar and dock derived power.



  • Super rich all have crewed boats, so its mostly to do with living space per foot of boat length or them as they just pay their way around the skill issue. Those who do like to occasionally pilot or race their own boat tend to have sailing boats as they are much more rewarding to sail.

    The bits that are different between a motor and sail yacht is really just the sails, that part is actually pretty simple to learn (mastering is something else). In mast/boom mains, electric furling head sails, hydraulic or electric winches, all make operating the sails push button.

    The navigation and marina skills are the same, if you have bow thrusters. As everything else is at a slower pace, sail boats are easier to get to grips with when under way and new to sailing.

    I completely get that not everybody wants to tack their way upwind, but its the pleasure in actually sailing in silence rather than a noisy and smelly motor that is the reward here. That, and the cost saving. I can do two weeks sailing covering hundreds of nautical miles for £50 in fuel for a 40 foot sail boat and that’s with having to run the motor as a generator to charge the batteries (charter boats suck for house electrics and solar), vs. £500 ish for a motor yacht.


  • Big part of this would be that its a foiling boat and that massively reduces drag from the water. Keeping weight and drag down are the secret to improving efficiency for EVs be they boats or cars. Any decent marina its easy to get multiple 22kw shore supply as well, it can be expensive and metered but you aren’t going to be waiting that long to recharge your boat.

    Electric makes the most sense on sail boats as they already have a green source of energy, and thanks to hydro they can convert some of that motion generated by the wind into charge for the batteries. Couple with solar and you start to look at a decent amount of energy generation.

    Sail boats also tend to have far less powerful ICE than your average motor yacht, so you need less powerful EV motors to achieve the same speed, and in the right conditions you only really need the motor getting in and out of the harbor so your battery bank is smaller and lighter. Plus you could make the batteries do double duty as the house batteries as well.

    The trick will be to get the super rich out of their shitty super yachts that burn a couple of thousand dollars of fuel per hour, they could already have sail boats but choose not to for the increased living space that they can get out of the same length of boat due to being able to build much higher due to no masts.



  • The problem is that they did not build battery factories quick enough, they sat on their hands waiting for massive hand outs to pay for the factories rather than investing. All while profiting off existing investment in ICE that is high return at this point in its life cycle. So they ended up making more profitable per unit halo models like the F150 that they do not need to sell in high volumes to get a return on.

    Batteries are about half the raw cost of an EV, if you paying somebody else to make it for you its going to be more expensive as they will want to make a profit and you are stuck being able to buy ever how many they want to sell you. In practice they have ended up funding a competitor to develop battery tech as well.

    Lowering battery cost is the secret to cheap prices, you cannot truly compete until you make your own batteries in high volumes.