Its been over a year now that I had the setup and here r some updates:
- still in love with the setup. Dozens of outings, hundreds of miles traveled . Both the battery and the motor as good as new.
- the trickiest part by far is waterproofing. Both the connections and control enclosure along with the switches in it. Saltwater and electricity are extremely hostile to contacts/switches, so fewer of em you have, the merrier. To control ASP T24, I use 2 DPDT switches (one to choose direction, 2nd one to chose high/lo speed). These do die every now and then, so it helps to have a setup where you can replace em. 6 pack of 20A DPDT rocker switches is $6 on Amazon. A tell-tale sign of a switch going bad is when it gets hot during operation. Replace it.
- Amazon & PROC keep amazin me. Now they have a $14 power meter: Voltage Power Analyzer Watt Meter . I use it both on the water, to see much juice was consumed and when I charge the battery (how much went into the battery). Godsend.
- You dont really need anything larger than 24lb thrust for a yak. Watersnake is outright amazing. So light, dirt cheap and fits right through the mirage hole, simple drop in/take out procedure, takes seconds (!). When launching/landing, I stow the entire unit under the front hatch
- at some point, I might try reversing the unit so that when going forward, I have the prop facing forward. It seems you get more thrust that way. Where I yak, there's no change of hitting any underwater obstacles. Another thing I might try is making a fairing for the motor shaft. A-la
http://www.boatdesign.net/forums/boat-d ... post305142 . I have about 10" of 1" motor shaft exposed to the water and a simple fairing has a chance of reducing drag considerably, as per article:
"Another thought on the fairing. I learned today that the round shaft has a Cd of .47 while the teardrop fairing has a Cd of .09. Even considering the shaft is 1.125 thick and the fairing is 1.5" thick, that means the drag coming from the shaft is reduced by a factor of 4 - tha'ts a lot when working with such small power levels. Also, it think the fairing helps the prop work more efficiently (no proof, though) because the round shaft leaves a turbulent wake and a lot of air right in front of the prop. The fairing smoothes out this flow."