June 16, 2020

Classic boat restoration expert and wooden boat builder Stan Hunter recently sent us this great story about his new Duke Playmate re-power. Here is what Stan wrote, “It seems that every time there is a pandemic someone has to get creative and reinvent the wheel.

I feel like no exception. More truthfully for the past thirty years that I have been in the boat business, I have been dreaming of ways to change things up in my industry and do things differently. Now that the price of gas is at historic levels (low) it might seem counter productive to give up on the internal combustion engine, and certainly the motor heads in my boat club acbs.ca have no interest in doing so.

Still, there is something to be said about addressing climate change and boating quietly, that has motivated me to re-power one of my beloved Duke Playmates electrically. I call it my Duke PlaymateE. What’s different now from the electric boats built over a century ago, is the evolution of battery power. Energy that used to be stored in a considerable amount of ballast can now be delivered with less weight and more strength than ever before. In my example, a robust 10kw of power is delivered by four lithium iron phosphate batteries that have 200amp hours of storage and can deliver over 100 amperes of current. This is what fellow ACBS member Paul Doddington might call ‘electrickery’. It’s the age we live in.

All this means that we can get to the island as quickly as before and attend parties along the way for as long as our bottoms can stand it. If you are sipping coffee, the cruise can outlast one’s bladder. In my corner this is success.

I hope that as things open up again and life returns to near normal that you will check out the new age found at my dock. Ahoy, Stan”

Boating Industry Canada News Week Digest thanks Stan for his letter and photos. You can visit Stan’s website at www.stanhunter.ca