{ TECH REPORT }
WATER POWER TOPS YOUR BATTERIES Let your boat’s speed through the water charge your battery bank WATER POWERED THE BEGINNING OF THE Industrial Revolution when inventors and entrepreneurs discovered that a turning water wheel could be used to drive the machines that can mill lumber, weave cloth and turn lathes. Water power could be transformed into economic power by harnessing the inherent energy in a flowing stream. So, it is not much of a leap for the tinkerers and inventors in the marine world to figure out that the flow of water past the moving hull of a sailboat contains the same energy as the water flowing past a water wheel. Plus, that energy is there whenever the boat is underway so all they had to do was figure how to harness it. Water generators are not new. American Hamilton Ferris has been building and selling water generators—the Water Power 200— 26
since 1975 and continues to upgrade the units to include the latest generating technology. The concept then and today is to devise a generator that uses a propeller that is made to spin by the flow of the water to turn a small generator. The current created by the generator then runs through a regulator to the battery bank. The speed of the boat and thus the speed of the water flowing past it determines the spinning speed of the prop and the amount of energy created by the generator. Speed equals energy. Contact Hamilton Ferris for more information about the next generation models soon to be on the market. The Ferris Water Power 200 can be converted into a wind generator with long blades and a tail that can be hung over the boat’s fore triangle where it will generate electricity while the boat is at anchor. Several other water Blue Water Sailing
