Cruising Catamarans and Hydrogenerators

THIS POST MAY CONTAIN AFFILIATE LINKS. PLEASE READ OUR DISCLOSURE FOR MORE INFO.

Last Updated on May 3, 2021 by Amy

We tackled a slew of projects in Cape Town, and one of them was installing a new hydrogenerator. Since then, we’ve sailed over 6,000 nm on three long passages. Let’s talk about how our hydrogenerator has worked out.

What is a Hydrogenerator?

A hydrogenerator is a unit that sits on the back of our boat. When deployed, the propellor of the hydrogenerator is fully submerged in the water. The propellor spins and generates power which gets pumped into our battery bank.

Why Use a Hydrogenerator?

Prior to installing our hydrogenerator, we had three options for charging our batteries:

• solar panels
• generator
• alternators on both engines

That set up has been working fine for at anchor, but while underway we were needing to use options two or three nearly every day. The addition of the autopilot, chart plotter, radar, AIS, etc means that we are using nearly double the power when we are underway. The solar panels just can’t keep up.

Plus, after running out of fuel in the Indian Ocean, we were looking for more ways to reduce our diesel usage.

Selecting a Hydrogenerator

We purchased a Watt & Sea Cruising 600. Watt & Sea is probably the biggest brand of hydrogenerators on the market. Many of our friends have Watt & Seas.

Installation

David had talked a lot with Sailing Yacht Eight, an FP Saona, regarding their hydrogenerator install, and he had a plan all set out to use a track to slide the hydrogenerator up and down to deploy or retract it. Unfortunately, when we got our hydrogenerator, we realized that our bridge deck transom was not tall enough to get the hydrogenerator completely out of the water when retracted. We had to scramble over the holidays to come up with another plan.

There were three major aspects of the install.

The hydrogenerator itself is removable, but it needs a bracket to be permanently installed. Typically the bracket is attached to the transom which is a bit tricky for us as the lower transom on Starry Horizons has a slight curve to it. A machine shop guy came by and talked to us about what we needed. David had something in mind, and the guy took measurements and made the bracket to our specifications. It came out perfect!

David installed the bracket by drilling four holes in the transom just off of the swim ladder. The machine shop had also made two backing plates for us. In order to give those backing plates a flat surface, David mixed up some epoxy to fit between the hull and the plates (coating the plates in wax in the hope we will be able to remove them again someday!) then through-bolted all of this together and used 3M 4200 to seal the assembly.

• 

• 

• 

• 

The second part was installing the plug nearby. It needed a vertical space to be mounted, so we installed it on the wall by the outdoor shower.

The third part was running the wires all the way from the plug to the battery bank. Running wires is always a major pain, as there’s not much empty space and the wires always tend to get jammed in the pipes. Plus, our batteries are all the way in our main salon, so the wire has to be extra thick and long.

Attaching the Hydrogenerator to the Bracket

Since the hydrogenerator is removeable, before each passage we pull it out of storage (aka the forward guest bunk) and attach it to the bracket. The hydrogenerator attaches using two locking pins. We work together to get it onto the bracket – definitely a two person job.

Deploying and Retrieving the Hydrogenerator

The hydrogenerator comes with a cam cleat at the top. The line to raise the hydrogenerator feeds through this cam cleat. There’s another line that comes through a hole just below the clam cleat. That’s the line that you pull to drop the hydrogenerator.

Unfortunately, you have to do quite a bit of additional set up to get the raising and lowering to work properly. You are deploying the hydrogenerator underway, and there’s a lot of force necessary to get the hydrogenerator completely down.

We installed two pulley systems, one to raise and one to lower the hydrogenerator. It takes a bit of coordination and practice to get it right. We had to increase our pulley ratios for me to be able to fully lift the hydrogenerator, and I really have to put my back into it.

I had done less research than David had, so I didn’t realize going in how much work the hydrogenerator would be. We have to raise it if we sail too fast, if the batteries are full, if we have to motor or run the generator. We are learning to always keep an ear out for any troublesome noises, espcially sailing in the Caribbean with sargassum seaweed getting caught on the propeller.

Interchangeable Propellers

Depending on how fast you can go, you will have to change out the propeller so that your hydrogenerator doesn’t get overloaded. Our model is quite sensitive to high voltages generated when the prop spins too fast. We have propellers in two different sizes: 240 mm and 280 mm. This is the medium and large props offered by the manufacturer. We also bought two spares in case they get any damage.

Hydrogenerator Performance

We’ve sailing three long passages (1,000+ nm) with our hydrogenerator so far.

On the first passage, sailing from Cape Town to Saint Helena, we discovered that the wire from the hydrogenerator to the batteries was not big enough. Basically, when we started sailing faster, the wires weren’t large enough to handle the amount of power flowing through them. This “traffic jam” caused a large enough voltage drop that our hydrogenerator thought the batteries were full. This makes the hydrogenerator go into absorption mode, and the propeller starts freewheeling (which makes a lot of noise).

While we were in Saint Helena David undertook a pretty massive rewiring project. Relocating some components of our electrical system to be closer to our batteries (and thus needing smaller wires – which we had) and re-purposing the larger wire from those components for the hydrogenerator. Our second passage, sailing to Recife was much better. We had very light winds, so we used our largest propeller the whole time.

Sail to Brazil – Using Primarily Large Propeller

• Avg Speed: 6.43 knots
• Avg Amps Generated/Hour: 12.83
• Avg Amps Generated in 1 day: 308.02
• Max Amps/Hour in 1 day: 13.28 @ 6.38 knots

Our third passage had more variable wind speed and boat speed. We were sailing from Recife to Antigua, through the doldrums and into the tradewinds.

Sail to Antigua – Total Mix of Large/Medium Prop 

• Avg Speed: 6.73 knots
• Avg Amps Generated/Hour: 10.34
• Avg Amps Generated in 1 day: 248.07
• Max Amps/Hour in 1 day: 13.64 – large prop day at 6.42 knots

Sail to Antigua – Medium Prop Days

• Avg Speed: 7.2 knots
• Avg Amps Generated/Hour: 10.3
• Avg Amps Generated in 1 day: 247.2
• Max Amp/Hour in 1 day: 12.67 @ 7.46 knots

So does our hydrogenerator perform as advertised? Short answer: no.

From the Cruising 600 webpage and the interactive output curves graph, with the 280 mm diameter propeller sailing at 6.4 knots, we should be seeing nearly 22 amps. On our sail to Brazil, we only used the 280 mm diameter propeller and averaged 6.43 knots. We generated, on average, 12.83 amps.

This difference probably has to do with our wiring. To run all the way back to the main salon from the engine room is quite a long run and requires a thick wire. David has plans to replace the wire yet again with a thicker one.

Conclusion

On our last passage sailing from Recife to Antigua, we only used our generator for 38 hours. This was always to top up our water tanks, not to top up our batteries. Combined with 19 hours of motoring, we only used 34 gallons of diesel, a major reduction from our previous usage.

Despite not getting output close to the output curves published by Watt & Sea, we are happy with the performance. Once we replace the wire again, we should be producing more amps. If we could get to the output advertised by Watt & Sea, or at least closer to it, it is possible that we could have enough power going in to run the watermaker off of our inverter and top up the water tanks without having to run the generator.

Pin it!